A Generation at Risk: When the baby boomers reach Golden Pond

Hogg Foundation for Mental Healt

Does working beyond the statutory retirement age have an impact on health and functional capacity? The Finnish Retirement and Aging cohort study

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the development of self-rated health, psychological distress and physical functioning between those retired on time and those who continued working beyond the individual retirement age. METHODS: The study population consisted of 2340 public sector employees from the Finnish Retirement and Aging study. Participants were categorised into no extension of employment (retired at the individual retirement date or <3 months past) and extension of employment (≥12 months). Propensity score matching (1:1 ratio) was used to identify comparable group of participants in the no-extension (n=574) and extension (n=574) groups by taking into account preretirement characteristics and their interactions. RESULTS: The prevalence of suboptimal self-rated health and psychological distress changed a little among the extension group during the follow-up from 1 year before (T1) to 18 months (T2) and 30 months (T3) after individual pensionable date. Compared with no extension, the risk of having suboptimal self-rated health in the extension group was 0.89 (95% CI 0.68 to 1.17) at T1, 1.16 (95% CI 0.88 to 1.53) at T2 and 0.96 (95% CI 0.68 to 1.37) at T3. For psychological distress, the corresponding risk ratios were 0.93 (0.65 to 1.32), 1.15 (0.78 to 1.69) and 1.04 (0.61 to 1.79). The mean differences in the number of physical functioning difficulties between the extension and no-extension groups were 0.06 (-0.16 to 0.29) at T1, 0.05 (-0.18 to 0.27) at T2 and -0.11 (-0.39 to 0.17) at T3. CONCLUSIONS: This study found no evidence that voluntarily extending the working career beyond retirement age would pose a risk to health and physical functioning among ageing workers

Aging in the Social Space

A publication called Aging in the Social Space is a compilation of studies, which deal with theoretical understanding and empirical solutions, learning about problem spheres, specifying content parallels of social, legal, economic, moral and ethical views on senior issues in society, which are closely related to each other and are interconnected. This publication focus on the case study of Poland. It is supposed to provide a multidimensional view of old age issues and issues related to aging and care for old people in society. We believe that it is natural also to name individual spheres, in which society has some eff ect, either direct or indirect, within issues concerning seniors. Learning about these spheres is the primary prerequisite for successful use of social help to seniors in society

Putting off Tomorrow to Do What You Want Today: Planning for Retirement

In this article we note that in the coming years, a larger number of people will be experiencing retirement for a longer period of time than ever before and that despite this fact, many will find themselves unprepared for this stage of their lives. We review the literature on retirement preparation, structuring our review around the key questions that need to be addressed when planning for retirement: (a) What will I do? (b) How will I afford it? (c) Where will I live? and (d) Who will I share it with? We make a number of suggestions for research and practice. We conclude that although psychology has begun to play a role in understanding and addressing retirement preparation, there are considerable opportunities for psychologists to engage with this issue in their research and applied work

Screening tests, information, and the health-education gradient

The association between health outcomes and education - the health-education gradient - is widely documented but little is known about its source. Using microeconomic data on a sample of individuals aged 50+ in eight European countries, we find that education and cognitive skills (such as verbal fluency) are associated with a greater propensity for standard screening tests (mammography and colonoscopy). In order to study the role of information on the decision to screen, we test whether the health-education gradient varies with the quality of the information provided by the health care system, as proxied by the quality of the General Practitioner. Using an Instrumental Variable approach to control for the potential endogeneity of the GP quality score, we find evidence of a strong and significant complementarity between education and quality of primary care. We interpret this result as evidence that health-education gradient can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that better educated individuals are more able to process and internalize health related information as provided by GPs

Population Aging: Facts, Challenges, and Responses

The world’s population is growing older, leading us into uncharted demographic waters. There will be higher absolute numbers of elderly people, a larger share of elderly, longer healthy life expectancies, and relatively fewer numbers of working-age people. There are alarmist views – both popular and serious – in circulation regarding what these changes might mean for business and economic performance. But the effects of population aging are not straightforward to predict. Population aging does raise some formidable and fundamentally new challenges, but they are not insurmountable. These changes also bring some new opportunities, because people have longer, healthier lives, resulting in extended working years, and different capacities and needs. The key is adaptation on all levels: individual, organizational, and societal. This article explores some potentially useful responses from government and business to the challenges posed by aging.population, aging, longevity, fertility

The Latino Age Wave: What Changing Ethnic Demographics Mean for the Future of Aging in the U.S.

Highlights data on aging Latinos/Hispanics, trends in the assets and needs of community-based organizations serving or that could serve older Latinos, and strategies for addressing gaps in supportive policies. Outlines best practices and recommendations

Technological Change in the Retirement Transition and the Implications for Cybersecurity Vulnerability in Older Adults

Retirement is a major life transition, which leads to substantial changes across almost all aspects of day-to-day life. Although this transition has previously been seen as the normative marker for entry into older adulthood, its influence on later life has remained relatively unstudied in terms of technology use and cybersecurity behaviours. This is problematic as older adults are at particular risk of becoming victims of cyber-crime. This study aimed to investigate which factors associated with the retirement transition were likely to increase vulnerability to cyber-attack in a sample of 12 United Kingdom based older adults, all of whom had retired within the past 5 years. Semi-structured, one to one interviews were conducted and subsequently analysed using thematic analysis. Six themes were identified referring to areas of loss in: social interaction, finances, day-to-day routine, feelings of competence, sense of purpose, and technology support structures. We discuss the implications of these losses for building cyber-resilience in retirees, with suggestions for future research

Pension reform, capital markets, and the rate of return

This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform – that is, a shift towards more pre-funding – for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized closed-economy, overlapping-generations model to compare the effects of the recent German pension reform with those of a more decisive reform that would freeze the current pay-as-you-go contribution rate and thus result in a larger funded component of the pension system. We predict rates of return to capital under both reform scenarios over a long horizon, taking demographic projections as given. Our main finding is that the future decrease in the rate of return is much smaller than often claimed in the public debate. Our simulations show that the capital stock will decrease once the baby boom generations enter retirement even if there were no fundamental pension reform. The corresponding decrease in the rate of return, the direct effect of population aging, is around 0.7 percentage points. While the capital market effects of the recent German pension reform are marginal, the rate of return to capital would decrease by an additional 0.5 percentage points under the more decisive reform proposal.