The Role of Normative Age-Graded Transitions and Human Agency in Patterns and Variations of Financial Exploitation of Older Adults

Objectives: Drawing from normative age-graded transitions and human agency, this study provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the patterns and variations of financial exploitation of older adults. Methods: The study employs qualitative methods with data collected from focus groups and interviews with residents of a large retirement community. Results: Normative age-graded transitions—such as retirement, residency relocations, changes in social support networks, medical events, death or incapacitation of a spouse, grief, declines in brain and physical health and cognition—lead to assessments of older adults’ sense of self-efficacy regarding their abilities to deal with everyday tasks, challenges, and decisions. If these assessments result in lowered self-efficacy, that reaches a threshold, cognitive transformations can occur, producing an increased vulnerability for financial exploitation. For those whose assessments of self-efficacy remained stable, financial exploitation was avoided. Conclusions: The role of normative age-graded transitions and general assessments of self-efficacy, thresholds, and cognitive transformations provides a promising theoretical approach for explaining patterns and variations of financial exploitation of older adults. These findings, if confirmed with more representative samples, can help validate the role of normative age-graded transitions and human agency in explaining why some, but not other, older adults fall victim to financial exploitation.