Nationally representative data of the Swedish population aged 77 years and older were obtained from the 1992 and 2002 Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD). Cognition was assessed with an abbreviated version of the Mini-Mental State Examination scale. Childhood living conditions were assessed by self-reports of childhood living conditions.

The results showed independent associations between conflicts in the household during childhood, father's social class, education, own social class in adulthood, and cognition in later life. Exposure to conflicts during childhood, having a father classified as a manual worker, low education, and/or being classified as a manual worker in adulthood was associated with lower levels of cognition in old age. There seemed to be no modifying effect of adult socioeconomic position on the association between childhood conditions and cognition in later life.

This suggests the importance of childhood living conditions in maintaining cognitive function even in late life.

We use 20 years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the income and consumption of older Americans.

The poverty rate is cut in fourth if both income and consumption are used to define poverty. Those most likely to be poor defined by only income but not poor defined by income and consumption together are married, White, and homeowners and have a high school diploma or higher. The income poor alone display sufficient assets to raise consumption above poverty thresholds, whereas the consumption poor are shown to have income just above the poverty threshold and few assets.

The poorest among the older population are those who are income and consumption poor. Understanding the nature of this double poverty population is important in measuring the success of future public policies to reduce poverty among this group.

Using the Health and Retirement Survey, the study estimates this relationship and compares findings from standard ordinary least squares, random effects, quantile regression, and two propensity score models.

Compared with married parents, childless married couples tend to have slightly more income and about 5% more wealth. Unmarried childless men enjoy no income advantage over unmarried fathers but have 24%–33% more wealth. Compared with older unmarried mothers, unmarried childless women have 12%–31% more income and about 33% more wealth. The strength of these relationships increases as one moves up the distribution of income or wealth.

This study provides evidence on the relationship between childlessness and both income and wealth, including the first evidence for men. The findings may be useful for persons concerned about the determinants of childless adults’ well-being as well as the long-run financial demands on public programs that provide income support, health and nursing home care, and social services for older Americans.

Data on individuals in households with older adults for 22 countries come from the Luxembourg Income Survey. Robust cluster analysis relates the risk of poverty to the type of state welfare regime; the characteristics of the household head (age, gender, marital status, and education); as well as the household's numbers of earners, older adults, and children.

Persons in households with older adults are significantly less likely to be poor in countries with social democratic and conservative welfare regimes than in Taiwan, an exemplar of limited social welfare programs. Controlling for country differences in household composition increases the differences in poverty risks. Living with fewer children, more older adults, and more earners lowers the risk of poverty, as does having a married and better educated household head.

Countries with more generous social welfare provisions have lower risks of poverty despite having household characteristics that are comparatively unfavorable. As Taiwan demonstrates, household composition, particularly a reliance on multigenerational households, compensates for limited state welfare programs.

Data came from 4,041 respondents to the 2007 Connecticut Long-Term Care Needs Assessment. Analyses investigated whether caregiving negatively affects depressive symptoms, health, missing work, and social isolation. Logistic regressions tested the independent effects of caregiver characteristics and conditions of the caregiving situation on these health and psychosocial outcomes.

Caregivers rate their health better than noncaregivers and do not report more depressive symptoms or social isolation. Living with the care receiver, inadequate income, and care receivers’ unmet need for community-based long-term care services relate to multiple negative outcomes. Care receiver memory problems and caregiver/care receiver relationship do not relate to health or psychosocial outcomes when these other factors are considered.

Caregiving per se does not lead to symptoms of depression, poor health, or social isolation. Many caregivers do need supports in training and education, respite, and physical and mental health care. Such programs should provide outreach to caregivers facing specific stressful conditions, as not all caregivers experience negative consequences.

Semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 22 hospice providers (14 nurses, 4 physicians, and 4 social workers) and 23 family caregivers (10 daughters, 4 wives, 2 husbands, and 7 others) of elderly patients (≥60 years old) who were receiving home services from four hospice care programs in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Although both groups identified similar skill sets, hospice providers emphasized technical skills such as administering medications, and family caregivers valued management skills such as organizing medications, coordinating with hired caregivers, and providing care to patients who resisted treatment. We defined effective medication management in hospice as caregivers’ ability to effectively relieve symptoms with pharmacological interventions by successfully utilizing skills related to teamwork (coordinate with hospice providers and with other family or hired caregivers), organization (acquire, store, track, and discard medications), symptom knowledge (recognize and interpret common symptoms), medication knowledge (understand the basics of pharmacology and medication administration), and personhood (understand and respond to the patient's needs).

The proposed construct of medication management skills in hospice will help guide future development of training interventions and clinical assessment tools.

We used data from the 1986 through 1996 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files for non-Hispanic White adults aged 55–84 years at the time of survey. We estimated Cox proportional hazards models to examine the gradients (N = 180,208).

The educational gradient of mortality is marginally steeper for men than for women when aggregating across marital statuses; yet, this reflects a steeper gradient among unmarried men, with low-educated never married men exhibiting high levels of mortality. The gradient among unmarried men is steeper than unmarried women for causes that share smoking as a major risk factor, supporting a behavioral explanation for differences in the gradient. No gender difference in the gradient is observed for married adults.

Low education and unmarried status exert a synergistic effect on men's mortality. Unmarried, low-educated men may lack social supports that encourage positive health behaviors.

Data are from in-depth interviews conducted with 62 African American and White rural older adults.

Three dimensions of complementary therapy use are delineated: types of therapies used, mindfulness in therapy use, and sharing information with conventional health care providers. The intersection of these dimensions indicates 5 patterned sets of complementary therapy use among rural older adults: (a) mindful use of only home remedies; (b) mindful use of home remedies and contemporary supplements; (c) mindful use of home remedies, contemporary supplements, and complementary practices; (d) nonmindful use of home remedies and contemporary supplements; and (e) use of conventional care only. Involvement in the 5 sets of therapy use is related to sex, ethnicity, educational attainment, and migration.

Understanding how older adults include sets of complementary therapies in their health self-management is important for improving their health care resources, expectations, awareness, and priorities.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, the analysis examined entries into and exits from formal volunteer activities between 1996 and 2004 by adults aged 55–65 at study baseline. The study showed the duration of volunteer activities, the probability that older adults start and stop volunteering, and the factors that significantly predict volunteer transitions.

The findings reveal considerable stability among both volunteers and nonvolunteers; however, older adults are more likely to stop volunteering than to start. Volunteers who contribute intensely and for many years and who are married to volunteers are the least likely to quit. And nonvolunteers are more likely to start volunteering if they have been uninvolved for few years and their spouses volunteer.

The results point to the need to focus efforts on retaining older volunteers to maximize volunteer engagement during later years. Recruiting older adults in volunteer activities early on, ideally before they retire, could also help meet volunteer needs.

Six panels of the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2002) on individuals aged 50–71 were used (N = 37,807). We used fixed-effects regression models with instrumental variables method to estimate the causal effect of retirement on change in the BMI.

Retirement leads to modest weight gain, 0.24 BMI on average. Weight gain with retirement was found among people who were already overweight and those with lower wealth retiring from physically demanding occupations. The cumulative effect of aging among people in their 50s, however, outweighs the effect of retirement; the average BMI gain between ages 50 and 60 is 1.30, 5 times the effect of retirement.

Given the increasing number of people approaching retirement age, the population level impact of the weight gain ascribed to retirement on health outcomes and health care system might be significant. Future research should evaluate programs targeted to older adults who are most likely to gain weight with retirement.

We used data from a cross-sectional nationally representative population-based sample of older Europeans, the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The analysis sample comprised 13,498 older Europeans from nine countries. The EURO-D was used to measure depression, and a well-being outcome was derived from self-report items available in SHARE. The between-country measurement invariance of both mental health outcomes was established using modern psychometric modeling techniques.

After adjustment for demographic characteristics and the presence of chronic illness, Spain was the country scoring highest on depression and Denmark highest on well-being. Optimal mental health was associated with higher educational attainment and being married.

There is considerable between-country heterogeneity in later-life mental health in Europe. The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and Austria, do best (low depression/high well-being), followed by Germany and France, whereas residents of Spain, Italy, and Greece report the worst mental health.

Data were obtained from a subsample of 3,907 men and 4,914 women aged 45 years and older without any severe disabilities who participated in the 2006 cross-sectional baseline survey of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). We compared depressive symptoms as determined by the Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression 10-item scale, adjusting for socioeconomic status, physical and cognitive function, and chronic disease. Using multiple regression analysis, we determined both age- and gender-specific differences associated with depressive symptoms and employment status.

Employment was associated with fewer depressive symptoms among middle-aged men but not among older men. Unemployment was associated with more depressive symptoms among middle-aged women but not among older women.

Work role did not provide any benefit for depressive symptoms among older men and women. We discuss the increased depressive symptoms among older employed men and the differential association of employment status with age and gender in the context of Korean social structure.

A variety of economic and demographic statistics are used to describe the changing age structure of the population and changing public spending on older people and children. Data from the 1985 General Social Survey and Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households are also used to examine connections between older people and children.

In recent decades, there has been a graying of the federal budget, and programs for children have received a declining proportion of domestic spending. These trends will be exaggerated between 2010 and 2030 unless structural changes occur. Grandparents may provide increasing resources for their grandchildren. Age segregation results in relatively few older people being directly involved with children not related to them by kinship.

The implications of population aging for children are relevant primarily for disadvantaged children. Disadvantaged children have grandparents with fewest resources and are most in need of public spending. As costs of supporting the older population increase, intentional social changes will be needed to prevent growing inequality among children.

Data on 755 respondents aged 64–92 are taken from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (Wave 2001–2002). Hierarchical negative binomial regression analysis is used.

Between 1 in 4 and 5 older adults who are married exhibit moderate or strong emotional or social loneliness. Stronger emotional and social loneliness is observed in adults whose spouse has health problems, who do not often receive emotional support from the spouse, who have nonfrequent conversations or are in disagreement, or who evaluate their current sex life as not (very) pleasant or not applicable. Emotional loneliness is stronger among women in second marriages, whereas marked social loneliness is especially characteristic of older men with disabled spouses. Moreover, smaller social networks and less contact with children also increase emotional and social loneliness in later life.

Differentiating marital quality and gender provides greater insight into emotional and social loneliness in married older people.

We used population registration data on Finns aged 65 years and older living with a cohabiting partner or a married spouse in 1997 (n = 140,902). The participants were characterized according to various socioeconomic indicators and followed for separation, institutionalization, bereavement, and death until 2002.

Elderly cohabitation almost doubled between 1990 and 2003, with 3.4% of men and 2.1% of women currently cohabiting. Low educational attainment, low occupational social class, and living in rented housing were associated with cohabiting rather than being married. Low income among men but high income among women predicted cohabitation. Cohabiting unions were more likely than marriages to end through separation, institutionalization, bereavement, and death, with the highest excess risk being for separation. These effects were mostly independent of socioeconomic factors.

In socioeconomic terms, elderly cohabiters are mostly less privileged than the married. Nonmarital unions seem somewhat less protective than marriages against institutionalization and death. The substantially higher risk of separation also puts cohabiters at higher risk of losing potential care and support provided by coresident partners.

Interviews were conducted with a nationwide sample of older adults (N = 1,361). Data were collected on meaning in life, mortality, and select control measures.

Three main findings emerged from this study. First, the data suggest that older people with a strong sense of meaning in life are less likely to die over the study follow-up period than those who do not have a strong sense of meaning. Second, the findings indicate that the effect of meaning on mortality can be attributed to the potentially important indirect effect that operates through health. Third, further analysis revealed that one dimension of meaning—having a strong sense of purpose in life—has a stronger relationship with mortality than other facets of meaning. The main study findings were observed after the effects of attendance at religious services and emotional support were controlled statistically.

If the results from this study can be replicated, then interventions should be designed to help older people find a greater sense of purpose in life.

We studied 499 elderly persons participating in ongoing annual interviews who died in the 12 months following an interview. We examined public and subjective religious involvement and indicators of health-related and psychosocial QOL, including health status and functional ability, family and friendship networks, depression, and well-being.

More deeply religious respondents were more likely to see friends, and they had better self-rated health, fewer depressive feelings, and were observed by the interviewer to find life more exciting compared with the less religious. Respondents receiving strength and comfort from religion reported poorer self-rated health. Those who attended religious services often were most likely to have attended holiday parties, even after adjusting for health status. Significant interactions indicated that the disabled benefited more from both public and subjective religious involvement than the nondisabled.

Overall, QOL in the last year of life is positively related to religious involvement, particularly its more subjective dimensions.