European Journal of Ageing最新文献

Population care needs are dynamic. They change throughout individuals' life courses and are related to the population structure. These needs are particularly demanding during population ageing and may vary depending on how societies cope with them. In this study, we explored the unmet social care needs of individuals in twelve European countries with different social care systems. We used data from the seventh wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to conduct a cross-sectional study of individuals aged 65 and over with care needs (n = 7136). Unmet care needs were measured from an absolute approach. We fitted binomial regression models to explain the relative importance of individuals' characteristics, health status and different social care systems on unmet needs. The absolute measure shows that 53.02% of the analytical sample faced unmet care needs as they reported limitations and did not receive help. The prevalence of unmet care needs is higher for men than women and for younger than older individuals. Furthermore, we found that individuals living in Mediterranean social care systems have the highest prevalence of these unmet needs. This analysis contributes to the ongoing debate about the challenges posed by ageing populations and their relationship with care.

Intergenerational family care provided to older parents by adult children is growing and differs based on gender and socioeconomic status. Few studies consider these elements in relation to both the parent and their adult child, and little is known about the number of care tasks received even though those providing intensive levels of care are at risk of experiencing adverse consequences in their lives. This study uses data from the nationally representative 2011 Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD) and includes child-specific information from parents aged 76 years and above. Analyses used ordinal logistic regression and are presented as average marginal effects and predictive margins. Results show that parents in need of care report that one-third of all adult children in the sample provide care to three out of five of them. The care is most often non-intensive, yet nearly one in ten of all children provide more intensive care of two or more tasks. When adjusting for dyad characteristics as well as geographic proximity, results show adult-child gender differences where parents receive more care from manual-working-class daughters than manual-working-class sons. Overall, manual-working-class daughters are most commonly reported as carers among adult children, and they are particularly overrepresented in providing intensive care. We conclude that gender and socioeconomic inequalities exist among care receivers' adult children, even in a strong welfare state such as Sweden. Knowledge about levels and patterns of intergenerational care have important implications for how to reduce unequal caregiving.

With increasing life expectancy, dementia poses an epidemiological challenge. As a cure has not been developed, the investigation into preventive factors becomes pivotal. Previous research emphasizes the cognitively stimulating and socio-emotional benefits of lifetime employment, but research on heterogeneous patterns across social groups and societal contexts remains sparse. Sociological approaches have a promising potential to provide insights into health inequalities and can contribute to the study of this major societal challenge. We investigate the influence of previous employment biographies on cognitive functioning for men and women aged 50 to 75 in 19 European countries, using longitudinal and retrospective information from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We link individual information on employment biographies and cognitive functioning to contextual measures of gender norms, using aggregated agreement rates to both men's and women's role in employment and family. We find that previous employment affects cognitive functioning men and women differently. Part-time employment is beneficial for women's cognitive functioning, but not for men's. Traditional gender norms are associated with lower levels of cognitive functioning for both genders and moderate the linkage between previous employment and cognitive functioning. In contexts with more traditional gender norms, men's part-time employment is associated with lower and women's part-time employment with higher cognitive functioning. We conclude that employment and non-employment participation can, depending on characteristics of individuals and contexts, benefit or hinder the life-course accumulation of cognitive reserve, and those with norm-deviating behaviour are disadvantaged.

Earlier employment choices based on family events in earlier life have an impact up until late working life, especially in welfare regimes that encourage the breadwinner-caretaker division. We investigate types of late employment patterns and how these are associated with earlier family events. We also test whether the association between early family history and late working life varies across five welfare regimes. Using retrospective life history data from SHARELIFE, our sample consists of 10,913 women and 10,614 men aged 65 years and older. Late working life trajectories are analyzed using gender-separate sequence analyses, which are summarized into eight groups applying cluster analyses. Using average marginal and interaction effects, we explain how the association between types of late working life, coresidential partnership history and parenthood history differs by welfare states. For instance, women's late employment is either shaped by unpaid care or paid (full- or part-time) work but not both, whereas men's late working life is mainly shaped by full-time work. Family history in earlier life is linked to unpaid care and part-time work-an association strongest in liberal and southern welfare regimes. However, among men earlier family events are linked to full-time work. Policymakers need gender-specific strategies to integrate workers into late working life. The implementation of new policies should aim to prevent these social inequalities in early life, as employment decisions caused by family history in earlier life stages-especially for women-tend to cumulate over the life course.

This study investigates the relationships between subjective age, intrinsic capacity, functional ability and health among Norwegians aged 60 years and older. The Norwegian Survey of Health and Ageing (NORSE) is a population-based, cross-sectional study of home-dwelling individuals aged 60-96 years in the former county of Oppland. Age- and sex-adjusted regression models were used to investigate the gap between subjective and chronological age and this gap's association with self-reported and objectively measured intrinsic capacity (covering all six sub domains defined by WHO), health, and functional ability among 817 NORSE participants. The results show most participants felt younger than their chronological age (86.5%), while relatively few felt the same as their chronological age (8.3%) or older (5.2%). The mean subjective age was 13.8 years lower than mean chronological age. Participants with urinal incontinence, poor vision, or poor hearing felt 3.1 [95% confidence interval (CI) (0.6, 5.5)], 2.9 [95% CI (0.2, 5.6)], and 2.9 [95% CI (0.3, 5.5)] years older, respectively, than participants without those conditions, whereas none of the following factors-anxiety, depression, chronic disease, Short Physical Performance Battery score, grip strength, cognition, or frailty-significantly had an impact on the gap. In line with prior research, this study finds that feeling considerably younger than one's chronological age is common at older ages. However, those with poor hearing, poor vision, and urinal incontinence felt less young compared to those not having these conditions. These relationships may exert undesirable effects on vitality and autonomy, which are considered key factors of intrinsic capacity and healthy ageing.

In recent years, research on internet usage in old age and its associations with well-being outcomes has increased. However, the oldest-old age group (80 years and older) is frequently underrepresented, and autonomy and functional health are rarely considered in these studies. By applying moderation analyses with a representative dataset of the oldest-old in Germany (N = 1863), our study has analyzed the hypothesis that the autonomy of older individuals, in particular of those with limited functional health, can be enhanced by internet usage. The moderation analyses indicate that the positive association between internet usage and autonomy is greater for older individuals with lower functional health. This association remained significant after controlling for social support, housing situation, education, gender, and age. Explanations for these results are discussed, and imply that further research is needed to understand the relationships between internet usage, functional health, and autonomy.

How much information we retain depends on type/schedule of training. It has been widely acknowledged that spaced learning is advantageous compared to massed learning for cognitively healthy young adults and should be considered an educational standard. Literature would suggest that the spacing effect is preserved with age, though it is unclear whether this effect translates to more ecologically valid concepts such as face-name associations, which are particularly susceptible to deterioration with age. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of spacing across recent/remote retention intervals, and the effect of age on spacing in cognitively healthy older adults using the Face-Name Pairs task. Experiment 1 results suggest that the beneficial memory effects of spacing are particularly observed with long-term memory. Experiment 2 results suggest that older adults are impaired at learning compared to younger adults, that the spacing effect influences both older and younger adults at longer intervals, and that spaced-trained participants display similar forgetting patterns at longer intervals, irrespective of age. These results may have some implications regarding improving the conditions under which optimum retention occurs (namely, whether spacing is beneficial when learning ecologically valid concepts at longer intervals outside of laboratory settings), and may provide insight into the effect of age on our ability to learn and remember face-name associations.