European Journal of Ageing最新文献

Most western countries lack the capacity to maintain institutional care levels for the ageing baby boom generation. To date, the non-medical drivers of the decision to "age in place" versus using expensive institutional long-term care (LTC) have not been comprehensively studied. This study, based on data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, aims to better understand why some individuals, with comparable medical needs, decide or are able to remain living independently longer than others.The sample included a representative cohort of Dutch adults aged 58 and older (n = 1,792), followed from 2005-06 to January 1, 2024. Cox Proportional Hazard models were used to better understand the relationship between potential non-medical barriers and facilitators and the duration of ageing in place.Several factors that facilitate ageing in place were identified. Individuals with comparable medical needs, but who are homeowners, who have a strong social network, or who have been living longer in their neighbourhood were less likely to be granted access to institutional care. This was also the case for those who value independence more or feel in control of their care. In contrast, emotional loneliness or having a partner living separately (typically in a nursing home) were associated with a higher likelihood of being granted institutional care. The actual move to a nursing home was delayed for those who feel that they receive sufficient home help. Developing community-based care approaches that address these factors may improve the ability to age in place.

The risk of vision impairment and cognitive decline increases with age and can jeopardize safe ageing at home. Our aim was to investigate the association of impaired vision and cognitive decline with falls among older adults receiving home care. Additionally, we examined how previously identified fall-related risk factors are linked to vision impairment and cognitive decline. We used register data (n = 26 353) from the Finnish Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) database. Four groups were created based on vision and cognition status: 1) no vision impairment or cognitive decline, 2) vision impairment alone, 3) cognitive decline alone, and 4) co-occurring vision impairment and cognitive decline. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the association of impaired vision and cognitive decline with falls. Based on results among older adults receiving home care, 12% had vision impairment alone, 37% had cognitive decline alone, and 18% had co-occurring vision impairment and cognitive decline. Vision impairment and cognitive decline, both individually and when co-occurring, were associated with experienced falls. Previously identified fall-related risk factors appeared to accumulate especially for older adults with co-occurring vision impairment and cognitive decline. Our study showed that vision impairment and cognitive decline play a significant role in the ability to live safely at home, particularly when they co-occur. Special attention should be paid to this vulnerable group to ensure safe and independent ageing in place. Timely identification and management of vision impairment may be crucial in preventing co-occurring vision impairment and cognitive decline.

This paper examines how caregiving influences employment transitions among employed mid-life adults (50-69 years) who began providing non-professional care on a daily basis to someone inside or outside their household. Using data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from 2004 to 2017, we apply a difference-in-difference model with propensity score weighting to estimate probabilities of various employment change outcomes for each care status. These outcomes include reducing working hours, exiting the labour market, and retiring. Results are compared to those who continue to work. We assess heterogeneities by gender, income and three empirically identified care regime types from the first article in this special collection: strong defamilialism/supported familialism (strong DF/SF), moderate DF/SF and familialism-by-default (FbD). Results show that overall and for each gender and care regime, retiring is the most likely employment transition for new caregivers. However, low-income persons that make the transition into co-resident care in moderate DF/SF care regime countries are more likely to reduce working hours than non-carers. Regarding labour market exits, no significant overall effect was found. Nonetheless, exit was less likely among men in FbD regime countries when care occurred outside their household. This pattern may reflect financial pressures to stay in employment in contexts of limited state support (hence, an income effect). Women, on the other hand, are less likely to exit in strong DF/SF countries, which might be an income effect in that context. To conclude, caregiving significantly affects employment transitions, with notable differences across gender, income levels, and care regimes. These results underscore the importance of policies that support caregivers-particularly in familialist contexts-by providing affordable formal care options and flexible workplace arrangements to help them remain in employment.

This study generates a classification of 26 European OECD countries with respect to care regimes. Care regimes are 'social joins' on the nexus between the state and the family, grouping countries into 'types' that have similar characteristics with respect to state care institutions. The latter are formal arrangements by the state that may alleviate citizens' care burdens either financially, in kind, or both. We build upon the literature on the dimensions of defamilialisation and familialism and empirically test how these two dimensions indicate different types of care regimes. We expect to find at least three different regime types that combine either high reliance on defamilialisation or on supported familialism, or the lack of both. We collected macro-data of 26 countries on five indicators of elder care institutions from various sources and subsequently performed latent profile analysis to group these countries into classes of similar state care arrangements. The results reveal three care regime types: 'strong Defamilialisation/Supported Familialism'; 'moderate Defamilialisation/Supported Familialism'; and 'Familialism-by-Default'. This classification contributes to developing a theoretical framework of care institutions and can guide other scholars in understanding contextual differences in socio-economic causes and consequences of elder care in Europe.

This study examines the association between gray parental divorce and family solidarity, defined as the quality and frequency of intergenerational relationships, including contact, emotional closeness, and functional support. The analysis focuses on how the effects of gray divorce vary across families with differing levels of closeness and interaction prior to the divorce, given that families with weaker bonds-such as infrequent contact or less emotional closeness-may face greater challenges in maintaining relationships after divorce compared to those with stronger ties. To test this, I use 13 waves of longitudinal data from pairfam and recentered influence function (RIF) regression that allows to examine how the effects of parental divorce differ across the entire distribution of solidarity, distinguishing between families with weak, moderate, and strong ties. Families with lower solidarity, particularly in terms of contact frequency and emotional closeness, are more likely to experience gray parental divorce. The negative effects of parental divorce on parent-adult child relationships are also more pronounced in these families and among fathers. Conversely, families with moderate or high levels of solidarity are more resilient to the negative impacts of divorce. Accordingly, the gap in intergenerational solidarity widens across families, with low-solidarity families being more likely to experience parental divorce later in life and exhibiting more negative outcomes compared to families with stronger ties. This growing differences across families also highlight the relevancy of targeted policy interventions aimed at supporting families, particularly those with weaker ties, and addressing the unique challenges faced by fathers after divorce.

Many countries, including Norway, are implementing policies to delay retirement and encourage older workers to remain in the labour market. Improving psychosocial working conditions may motivate older workers to continue working. While research has linked psychosocial working characteristics to retirement intentions and work exit, there is a knowledge gap regarding gender and socioeconomic differences in these influences. This study investigates the impact of psychosocial working characteristics on employment exit among older workers, examining variations by gender and educational attainment. Data were drawn from the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing, and Generation study (NorLAG) collected in 2007 and 2017 (N = 2,065) linked to income register data for four subsequent years. Time-to-event analyses revealed that poorer psychosocial working environment increased the likelihood of employment exit. For women, low autonomy was significant, while for men significant associations were found for high job stress, low job variety, lack of appreciation, limited learning opportunities, accumulation of poor job resources, and job strain. Interaction analysis showed only significant gender differences for few learning opportunities and poor job resources. Separate analyses stratified by educational attainment showed no significant association for those with compulsory education, while those with higher levels of education were more likely to retire if faced with low job variety, low autonomy, and poor job resources-yet interaction analysis showed no significant differences. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at delaying retirement should consider gender and socioeconomic differences, providing older workers with more control over their tasks and equitable access to learning opportunities and resources.

Out-of-home mobility and neighborhood environment have been, respectively, shown to be associated with older adults' cognitive abilities and they may have combined effects. Adopting an ecological perspective to mobility-cognition associations, this study examined daily maximum distance from home in relation to daily working memory performance in community-dwelling older adults and the moderation effect of neighborhood environments. Analyses included data over 947 days from 109 Swiss older adults aged 65 to 89 years. Over two weeks, participants wore a custom-built mobile GPS tracker and completed a smartphone-based numerical memory updating task seven times per day. Daily maximum distance from home was extracted from the GPS data. Neighborhood environments were assessed with the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale at baseline. Multilevel models showed that maximum distance from home was not associated with working memory performance, but there were cross-level moderation effects of neighborhood environments. Daily maximum distance from home was positively (vs. negatively) associated with daily working memory performance in participants who lived in neighborhoods with more (vs. fewer) places for walking and cycling and higher (vs. lower) land use mix-diversity. Out-of-home mobility and neighborhood environment could have combined effects on older adults' cognitive abilities. Neighborhoods with more places for walking and biking or having a higher mixture of land use could enhance a positive association between traveling a far distance from home and working memory performance.

Research on the relationship between parenthood and life satisfaction has revealed mixed results, with older parents reporting higher life satisfaction than older nonparents in some countries but not in others. This study investigates whether the link between parenthood and life satisfaction among individuals aged 60 years and older systematically varies across countries. Drawing on the theoretical premise that country-specific factors influence both the benefits of parenthood and the psychological costs of childlessness, the study examines the roles of pronatalist norms, filial elder-care norms, and the economic conditions of older individuals in shaping the life satisfaction gap between parents and nonparents. The study analyzes European Social Survey data on 114,513 individuals aged 60 years and older in 32 European countries using multilevel regression models. The results show that the life satisfaction gap between parents and nonparents is positively related to the strength of pronatalist norms and the level of economic vulnerability among older people. In contrast, elder-care norms are not uniformly linked to the magnitude of the life satisfaction gap. However, a particularly large life satisfaction gap was observed in countries with both high levels of economic vulnerability and strong elder-care norms. These findings suggest that the extent to which parenthood affects the life satisfaction of older individuals strongly depends on societal context.

Occupational stigma can negatively impact aged care workers' (ACWs) mental health. This mixed-methods study investigates whether ACWs who challenge stigmatising discourses, through communication, experience reduced psychological costs of aged care stigma. We screened 184 ACWs' discursive responses and tested for differences in ACWs' mental health between those who challenge stigma and those who do not. A discourse approach was further employed to examine recurring language patterns in 'challenge' discursive responses. ACWs (n = 95) who discursively challenged stigmatising discourses reported lower internalised occupational stigma and psychological distress than those who did not challenge stigma (n = 89). These workers chose to infuse positive value into negative evaluations about ACWs and aged care work. Overall, findings suggest that ACWs may spontaneously challenge occupational stigma, through their discursive responses, which may proactively protect their mental health. We offer practical implications for challenging stigma, including developing guidelines, training, and language-based interventions.

In the face of prevailing negative views on old age, aging individuals try to maintain the self-concept of a young person. They may do so by feeling younger than they are or by shifting the threshold of old age. According to the dual-process theory of developmental regulation, the former represents an assimilative coping process, whereas the latter represents an accommodative coping process. In the present work, we investigated the usage of those two processes across various life domains (e.g., family, work, and leisure). We hypothesized that individuals try to maintain a young self-concept particularly in those domains they view as important for themselves. We furthermore expected older adults to rely more strongly on shifting the threshold of old age in personally important domains (= accommodative response) and younger adults to rely more strongly on feeling young in personally important domains (= assimilative response). We investigated these hypotheses in a cross-sectional sample of 768 individuals aged 30 to 80 years. Analyses were conducted in a multilevel framework with the life domains nested within individuals. Our hypotheses were confirmed. Participants protected a young self-concept selectively in domains that were important to them. Younger adults felt particularly young in self-relevant domains, whereas older adults selectively chose higher old age thresholds in self-relevant domains. Both processes may allow individuals to protect their self-concept and to dissociate themselves from the stigmatized identity of an old person. Results also shed light on the idealization of being young in our society.