Between-Person Disparities in the Progression of Late-Life Well-Being

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. In this chapter, we argue that focusing on a phase of life during which this positive picture does not necessarily prevail promises to help us better understand between-person disparities in the progression of late-life well-being. In a first step, we review empirical evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel and other large-scale longitudinal data sets to demonstrate that ubiquitous reports of a "stability-despite-loss phenomenon" of well-being do not generalize into years of life immediately preceding death. Instead, mean-level representations of the end of life are characterized by a rapid deterioration in well-being. In a second step, we highlight the vast heterogeneity in how people experience the last years and consider the role of biopsychosocial individual difference factors to account for such disparities. The select factors reviewed here include socio-demographic characteristics, cognitive fitness, pathology, and disability. In a third step, we argue that macro-contextual factors such as the social, service, and physical characteristics of the communities and societies people are living and dying in also profoundly shape the nature and progression of individual late-life well-being. Our conceptual reasoning forecasts some of the insights that can be gained by pursuing this line of research, but also underscores the challenges researchers must deal with

Exchange Rate and Political Risks, Again

We examine the effects of exchange rate and political risks on foreign direct investment (FDI) for multinationals. Our strategy is to examine FDI by U.S. firms at two levels: in all industries and on the subset of only firms in manufacturing industries. When investing in developed economies the firms appear to take past and present variation in exchange rates into consideration. When investing in less developed nations the past and present variation does not appear to weigh as heavily as the present and future variation. Decreasing political risk increases FDI