Self-reported health and cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress in a large community sample: Cross-sectional and prospective associations

Exaggerated cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress have been implicated in a number of adverse health outcomes. This study examined, in a large community sample, the cross-sectional and prospective associations between reactivity and self-reported health. Blood pressure and heart rate were measured at rest and in response to an arithmetic stress task. Self-reported health was assessed concurrently and five years later. In cross-sectional analyses, those with excellent/good self-reported health exhibited larger cardiovascular reactions than those with fair/poor subjective health. In prospective analyses, participants who had larger cardiovascular reactions to stress were more likely to report excellent/good health five years later, taking into account their reported health status at the earlier assessment. The findings suggest that greater cardiovascular reactivity may not always be associated with negative health outcomes

The Strategies to Reduce Injuries and Develop Confidence in Elders Intervention: Falls Risk Factor Assessment and Management, Patient Engagement, and Nurse Co‐management

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141587/1/jgs15121.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141587/2/jgs15121_am.pd

Emptying the Nest: Older Men in the United States, 1880–2000

Between 1880 and 2000, the percentage of married men 60 and older living only with their wives in empty nest households rose from 19 percent to 78 percent. Data drawn from the US census show that more than half of this transformation occurred in the 30-year period from 1940 to 1970, bookended by moderate increases between 1880 and 1940 and very modest increases after 1970. Two literatures have presented demographic, cultural, and economic explanations for the decline in elderly co-residence with their children, but none adequately accounts for a sharp change in the mid-twentieth century. Both aggregate comparisons and multivariate analysis of factors influencing the living arrangements of elderly men suggest that economic advances for all age groups in the critical 30-year period, along with trends in fertility and immigration, best explain the three-stage shift that made the empty nest the dominant household form for older men by the beginning of the twenty-first century.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79362/1/j.1728-4457.2010.00332.x.pd

How Do Social Security and Income Affect the Living Arrangements of the Elderly? Evidence from Reforms in Mexico and Uruguay

It has been shown that the social security system and other sorts of government transfers have helped poor elderly people, such as widows, to live alone in the U. S. This paper investigates whether government financial support contributed to the increase in the probability of the vulnerable elderly living alone in Latin American countries as well. Specifically, the countries that in the 1980s experienced government reforms favorable to the vulnerable elderly, Mexico and Uruguay, are examined. It is concluded that the improvement of educational attainment was mainly responsible for helping the elderly poor to live alone in rural areas in Mexico, and not the government system. On the other hand, in Uruguay, for unmarried elderly females, the increase in social security income explains most of the increase in the probability of living alone

Living arrangements of the elderly in the United States in 1910

The living arrangements of elderly people in the United States in the early twentieth century are studied with a new data source, the Public Use Sample of the 1910 U.S. Census. The living arrangements of old people in 1910 do not match the stereotypes of extended family households; most households contained no more than one conjugal couple. Unlike today, however, most elderly people lived with at least one child. This research tests hypotheses which are suggested by demographic, economic, and cultural explanations for change in the household structure of the elderly over time. Demographic estimation techniques are used to measure the availability of kin with whom elderly people could reside. Log linear models are estimated to test the importance of economic resources, numbers of children, and race in determining the living arrangements of elderly widows. Numbers of children, among elderly women, and race, among elderly men, are shown to significantly affect the probabilities of living alone and living with children in 1910. Comparing models from 1910 and 1980 suggests that the effect of income on the probability of living alone has changed over the course of the twentieth century in the United States; however, this comparison also suggests that the whole set of relationships which determine living arrangements, including values about privacy, has been altered and that it is impossible to identify one factor as the primary agent of change