Journals of Gerontology Series B-Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences最新文献

Objective: To investigate whether childhood exposure to local area New Deal emergency employment work relief activity was associated with lower depressive symptoms in late life.

Methods: This study utilized individual-level data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) linked to the full count 1940 census. New Deal emergency employment programs were the largest nonwartime expansion in government-led infrastructure, services, and employment policy in U.S. history. We used within-county variation in WLS participants' exposure to emergency employment work relief activity during childhood (aged 0-3) to examine its association with depressive symptoms in late life. We examined depressive symptoms at 3 ages, 53-55, 65-67, and 72-74 but with a focus on depressive symptoms at ages 72-74 as a marker for late-life depression.

Results: Children who lived in neighborhoods with moderate or high levels of emergency employment work relief activity exhibited 14%-18% lower depressive symptom scores at ages 72-74 compared with those from neighborhoods with low activity. These findings were consistent across various measures of late-life depressive symptoms, different model specifications, and after accounting for prior depressive symptoms.

Discussion: The study highlights the long-term mental health benefits of economic policies aimed at mitigating concentrated economic downturns among the most impacted individuals. Childhood exposure to New Deal work relief reduced depressive symptoms in older age, particularly new onsets of depressive symptoms at ages 72-74. These results suggest social policies aimed at maintaining economic activity in downturns can have long-term positive impacts on the population mental health.

Objectives: The current study aims to investigate the association between daily stressful experiences and daily diurnal cortisol in midlife and older parents of children with developmental disabilities (DD) and a matched sample of parents of children without DD.

Methods: Analyses were employed using data from the third wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE 3) within the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, a population-based sample. The study sample included 55 parents of children with DD and 591 comparison parents who provided diurnal cortisol data.

Results: Multilevel modeling showed that parents of children with DD exhibited a less pronounced cortisol awakening response (CAR) on days when the severity of daily stressors was higher than their average level across days, a pattern that was different than in the comparison group. This finding may suggest a blunted CAR, which aligns with previous research on parents of children with DD and other groups facing chronic stress.

Discussion: The current study describes a distinct pattern of cortisol response to stressful parenting, evident in midlife and older age, reflecting the lifelong impacts of parenting children with DD.

Objectives: Scholars have increasingly recognized the crucial role that empathy plays as informal caregivers provide unpaid care to their older family and friends (i.e., care recipients). Yet, the existing literature exhibits substantial variability in study approaches and results, which limits the extent to which this literature can inform interventions intended to benefit informal caregivers. We sought to address this critical gap by synthesizing research that examined how caregivers' and care recipients' empathy were associated with caregivers' psychological health.

Methods: We conducted a literature search using PubMed, PsycInfo, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), EMBASE, and Scopus databases and systematically reviewed 21 peer-reviewed studies that were eligible for the current study. We utilized a multilevel random-effects approach and meta-analyzed 17 studies focused on caregivers' negative psychological outcomes (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety, burden, burnout, stress).

Results: We observed small, nonsignificant associations linking caregivers' emotional and cognitive empathy to their negative psychological outcomes. Yet, there were moderate, significant associations between greater emotional and cognitive empathy in care recipients and less negative psychological outcomes in caregivers. We also ran sensitivity tests for different aspects of emotional and cognitive empathy.

Discussion: This review reveals considerable heterogeneity in extant research but still offers robust evidence linking care recipients' empathy to caregivers' psychological health. Findings highlight the importance of engaging care recipients in interventions targeting caregivers and call for more consistent and nuanced investigations of empathy in caregiving.

Objectives: Despite the importance of spousal caregiving, and the increase in same-sex marriages concomitant to its legalization in 2015, few studies have examined the experiences of same-sex spousal caregivers. We use an intersectional approach to explore how gender and sexual orientation shape gay men's particular caregiving approaches for their spouses living with dementia.

Methods: We focused on a subsample of gay (N = 13) contrasted with straight husbands (N = 15) from a national study of spousal dementia caregivers. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews and analyzed thematically by a team.

Results: We find that sexual minority status and gender interact to shape gay men's caregiving approaches. Gay men's broader division of labor in households combines with experiences of discrimination based on sexuality and HIV/AIDS, as well as being a part of a same-sex couple to influence their caregiving approaches in unique ways. Specifically, they combine a task-oriented approach with concern for the personhood of the care receiver; bring strength and empathy borne of struggle; and what they feel is a deeper understanding of the care receiver given their shared status as gay men.

Discussion: Our findings indicate that gay men's flexibility in divisions of labor results in variable sets of skills, resources, and identities they bring to and approach their caregiving. In addition, some of the many negative experiences borne of HIV/AIDS and discrimination are reframed as sources of strength and guide caregiving efforts. Together, these findings highlight the intersecting effects of gender and sexual orientation on spousal caregiving.

Objectives: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with increased mortality risk. Individuals with a history of certain adversity during childhood tend to report higher levels of loneliness in later life. In our preregistered study, we examined whether loneliness mediates the ACEs to mortality risk relation.

Methods: Participants were from the Midlife in the United States Survey (N = 4,963; M [SD] = 46.44 [12.52] years, 53.3% female). Follow-up period spanned 26 years. A comprehensive measure of ACEs was employed consisting of 20 ACEs from 5 categories: physical abuse, emotional abuse, socioeconomic disadvantage, adverse family structure, and poor health at age 16 years.

Results: ACE was a significant predictor of mortality risk. Loneliness mediated the ACEs-mortality risk relation. In other words, loneliness in adulthood accounted for the relation between ACEs and future death. These effects withstood a range of sensitivity checks and adjustments for important factors, such as social isolation.

Discussion: Loneliness appears to be a central mechanism in the long-term impact of ACEs on longevity, such that, for adversity during childhood, loneliness experienced during adulthood may be a toxic pathway to future death.

Objectives: Higher schooling attainment is associated with better cognitive function at older ages, but it remains unclear whether the relationship is causal. We estimated causal effects of schooling on performances on the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) word-recall (memory) test at older ages in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa.

Methods: We used harmonized data (n = 30,896) on older adults (≥50 years) from the World Health Organization Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health. We applied an established nonparametric partial identification approach that bounds causal effects of increasing schooling attainment at different parts of the schooling distributions under relatively weak assumptions.

Results: An additional year of schooling increased word-recall scores by between 0.01 and 0.13 SDs in China, 0.01 and 0.06 SDs in Ghana, 0.02 and 0.09 SDs in India, 0.02 and 0.12 SDs in Mexico, and 0 and 0.07 SDs in South Africa when increasing schooling from never attended to primary. No results were obtained for Russia at this margin due to the low proportion of older adults with primary schooling or lower. At higher parts of the schooling distributions (e.g., high school or university completion), the bounds cannot statistically reject null effects.

Discussion: Our results indicate that increasing schooling from never attended to primary had long-lasting effects on memory decades later in life for older adults in 5 diverse low- and middle-income countries.

Objectives: Excessive financial risk-taking in older age can have harmful consequences as opportunities to recover lost wealth are limited. Understanding financial risk-taking in older age is important for identifying vulnerabilities and developing interventions to empower aging investors to make wise financial choices. In this paper, we explore how overconfidence in financial knowledge affects financial risk-taking among older adults.

Methods: We examine this research question in older adults aged 58-101 (N = 1,242) using data from the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP).

Results: After controlling for demographics, overconfidence was associated with self-reported financial risk tolerance such that those who were more overconfident reported tolerating more financial risks. Moreover, this relationship emerged for both healthy older adults and those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. However, overconfidence did not predict performance on a behavioral measure of risk aversion.

Discussion: The present results suggest that overconfidence may partially contribute to financial risk-taking in older adults, regardless of cognitive status. Thus, interventions aimed at calibrating confidence to actual levels of financial knowledge could be an impactful target for intervention.

Objectives: A growing body of research examines how adult children's education influences older parents' cognitive health. Whereas prior studies tend to focus on educational advantage, this study seeks to understand how various measures of educational disadvantage are associated with parents' dementia likelihood. In addition, we ask how the risks associated with one child's educational disadvantage are shaped by a sibling's educational success.

Methods: Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (2000-2018) and event history analyses, comparisons are made between measures of offspring educational disadvantage and their relationships with parents' risk of dementia onset. In addition, analyses are conducted to understand whether the link between one child's educational disadvantage and parental dementia onset is influenced by a sibling's educational advantage.

Results: Educational disadvantage is associated with an increased risk of parental dementia onset, with a threshold measure for whether a parent had at least one child without a high school education providing the best model fit for the data. Moreover, the heightened risks associated with one child's educational disadvantage are not offset by another sibling's educational success.

Discussion: Children's educational deficits are a hidden source of health disparities among older parents. Although scholars in recent years have rightly focused on the importance of offspring education, more attention should be paid to conceptualizing how educational disadvantage matters for parents and how the educational attainment of each child shapes parents' cognitive health.

Background: Although a greater social engagement is often associated with a reduced risk of depression, longitudinal studies that account for diverse social structures and cultural contexts among middle-aged or older are limited.

Methods: This study utilized cohort data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (n = 11,174; 2006-2020) in South Korea (KR), the Health and Retirement Study (n = 42,405; 2004-2019) in the United States, and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (n = 28,624; 2002-2019) in the United Kingdom, including a total of 29,378 individuals from the population aged ≥45 years. Social engagement frequency was categorized into infrequent, intermediate, and frequent, with changes classified as unchanged, increased, or decreased. The primary outcome was the onset of depression, assessed using the CES-D scale. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using a Cox proportional hazards regression model.

Results: In the KR cohort, increased social engagement significantly reduced depression risk only in the infrequent group (KR: HR, 0.20 [95% CI: 0.14-0.28]). However, decreased social engagement elevated depression risk in both the intermediate group (KR: 6.92 [3.73-12.83]; United States: 1.44 [1.16-1.79]) and the frequent group (KR: 1.50 [1.30-1.74]; United States: 1.24 [1.13-1.38]). Conversely, in the UK cohort, increased social engagement raised depression risk in the infrequent group (UK: 1.35 [1.01-1.79]) and intermediate group (UK: 1.63 [1.17-2.27]), whereas decreased engagement lowered depression risk only in the frequent group (UK: 0.80 [0.71-0.90]).

Discussion: We observed notable national variations in the association between social engagement and depression risk, influenced by cultural and political differences.

Objectives: For LGBTQ+ communities, learning often happens among chosen families, including older adults. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical concepts of capital (e.g., economic, social, cultural, symbolic) and queer theory of sexual capital, this article examines how LGBTQ+ chosen families share expertise to build knowledge and power across the life course.

Methods: Using a transformative sequential mixed-methods design from a larger project, this subproject includes data from 6 intracategorical focus groups with multigenerational and multiracial LGBTQ+ participants (n = 37), including older adults, in a Midwestern community to center their voices, understand their experiences within and outside LGBTQ+ communities, foreground experiences of LGBTQ+ aging, and explore challenges and supports.

Results: We identified 3 ways in which LGBTQ+ chosen families shared knowledge about various forms of capital: latent mentorship, bi- or multi-directional mentorship, and transgressive mentorship. We call these 3 types of knowledge sharing "mentorship in the margins," in which knowledge is shared within and among communities whose intersecting positionalities both limit and expand ways to imagine mentorship for navigating structural barriers and social, economic, and political inequities, especially regarding shared housing, family formation, and marriage equality.

Discussion: The breadth and depth of multigenerational transfers of knowledge across the life course demonstrate the centrality of multigenerational chosen families for LGBTQ+ communities as they age, especially among multiply-minoritized communities (e.g., transgender women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC] same-gender-loving communities). Knowledge shared among chosen families also reflects how "mentorship in the margins" builds individual and collective power that helps LGBTQ+ communities survive and thrive as they age.