Cross-age friendship in 25 European countries

This paper focuses on individual and country-level circumstances shaping friendships between young and old to gain insight into conditions for intergenerational solidarity. Using European Social Survey data, findings show that relatively few people have cross-age friendships (18% of the young and 31% of the old). As predicted by the “meeting principle”, individuals who operate in settings where there are opportunities for meaningful interactions with people belonging to a different age group are more likely to have cross-age friendships. As predicted by the “disposition principle”, individuals with more favourable attitudes towards other age groups are more likely to have cross-age friendships. Neither the Active Ageing Index nor macro-level trust show significant associations with the likelihood of having cross-age friendships. Apparently, conditions that bring generations together are at the local level, underscoring the importance of decentralized initiatives aimed at increased contact and co-operation across age groups

Vriendschappen tussen jong en oud in 25 Europese landen

_Cross-age friendships in 25 European countries_ This paper focuses on individual and country-level circumstances shaping friendships between young and old to gain insight into conditions for intergenerational solidarity. Using European Social Survey data, findings show that relatively few people have cross-age friendships (18% of the young and 31% of the old). As predicted by the ‘meeting principle’, individuals who operate in settings where there are opportunities for meaningful interactions with people belonging to a different age group are more likely to have cross-age friendships. As predicted by the ‘disposition principle’, individuals with more favourable feelings about other age groups are more likely to have cross-age friendships. Neither the Active Ageing Index nor macro-level trust and individualism show significant associations with the likelihood of having cross-age friendships. Apparently, conditions that bring generations together are meeting opportunities at the local level, underscoring the importance of decentral

Are societies with a high value on the Active Ageing Index more age-integrated?

Combining round four data from the European Social Survey (ESS) with indicators of Active Ageing, we examine conditions conducive to age integration. We use both a behavioural and an attitudinal measure of age integration: the prevalence of cross-age friendships and low levels of ageism. The analyses focus on both “young” (age 18 to 30) and “old” (ages 70 to 90). Interestingly, high levels of independence, health and security in late life, and greater capacity to actively age rather than high levels of working, volunteering, caring and political engagement among the old create the greatest opportunities for meaningful cross-age interactions. These findings suggest that quality of life, well-being and autonomy contribute to a general atmosphere facilitating sustained familiarity of the old with the young. Caution is advised in equating high levels of active engagement among the elderly with conditions enabling durable interactions between young and old, thereby promoting a better understanding of people of different ages. “Productive ageing” will in and of itself not lead to greater age integration

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Employability-enhancing practices usually refer to training or courses, but also practices directed towards older workers to sustain their work capability can be embraced by this term. In the context of an ageing population and workforce, older workers’ labour market participation gains an increasingly important role. Therefore, the importance of employability-enhancing practices is noted as a solution to sustain their employment. In this study, we focus on employer-provided employability practices for older workers. We answer the following research question: which practices do employers use to enhance their older workers’ employability and under which conditions are these practices adopted. Analyses on Dutch corporate data (N=860) show that employers mainly provide employability-enhancing practices that are easily implemented and not expensive. This finding replicates prior research and clarifies that job redesign should be considered as a possibility to keep older workers in the labour market. Furthermore, our study shows that both organizational and labour market characteristics affect employers’ decisions whether to provide employability-enhancing practices for their older workers. This suggests that policy measures might be necessary to assimilate investments in employability-enhancing practices across organizations

Should I stay or should I go?

__Abstract__ The central aim of this dissertation is to investigate how variation in older persons’ labour market participation can be explained. With increasing age, one question becomes ever more pressing for an older worker: “Should I stay or should I go?”. Older persons will make a host of considerations before answering this question. First and foremost, they have to ask themselves whether or not retirement is economically feasible. Can I already afford withdrawing from the labour market, or do I still have to supplement my income by participating? Further considerations may for example involve the partner: Does s/he encourage retirement? Also in the event of poor health or health-related limitations in performing work tasks, the inclination to retire is likely to b

Ontstaan en preventie van burnout.

In dit rapport zijn dossiers onderzocht van mensen die met de beroepsziekte burnout te kampen hebben gekregen. Doel van het onderzoek was om de vraag te beantwoorden hoe burnout tot stand komt en hoe burnout had kunnen worden voorkomen.Samenvattend laat dit onderzoek zien dat de risicofactoren van burnout liggen in a) langdurig hoge taakeisen, b) onduidelijke arbeidsorganisaties, en c) veranderingen in de arbeidsorganisatie. Om burnout succesvol te voorkomen, moeten preventiemaatregelen gebaseerd zijn op de individuele situatie van de werknemer maar moet ermee rekening worden gehouden dat hiervoor vaak veranderingen in de arbeidsorganisatie nodig zijn en deze gefaciliteerd moeten worden door de werkgever.In dit rapport zijn dossiers van mensen die met een burnout beroepsziek zijn geworden onderzocht om de vraag te beantwoorden hoe burnout tot stand komt en hoe burnout had kunnen worden voorkomen. Burnout is een werkgerelateerde aandoening die voortkomt uit langdurige werkdruk, die is uitgemond in werkstress. De vraagstelling was dan ook in de eerste plaats welke werkomstandigheden als oorzaak voor de burnout kunnen worden begrepen. In de wetenschappelijke literatuur rond psychische gezondheid worden drie werkkenmerken onderscheiden die de psychische gezondheid mede bepalen: taakeisen, regelmogelijkheden en sociale steun. De theorie veronderstelt dat de combinatie van deze drie werkkenmerken bepaalt hoe hoog de werkdruk/werkstress is die mensen ervaren. Hoge taakeisen in combinatie met weinig regelmogelijkheden en ontbrekende sociale steun kunnen bij mensen werkstress veroorzaken. In dit rapport blijken deze drie werkkenmerken, maar vooral de taakeisen, een rol te spelen voor het ontstaan van de burnout. Dit wil zeggen dat een van de redenen waarom de werknemers in de onderzochte dossiers uitvallen met burnout, is dat zij over lange tijd overbelast zijn. Veel bestudeerde werknemers komen in een functie terecht die tijdelijk onbezet was en waar werk was blijven liggen. Dit belemmert de uitvoering van hun taken vaak op de lange termijn. Daarnaast blijkt dat de organisatiestructuur in veel gevallen aan de uitval heeft bijgedragen. Bij meerdere betrokken medewerkers vallen ook collega’s uit met overspanningsverschijnselen of is de hoge werkdruk in de organisatie als probleem erkend. Ten derde werken de bestudeerde meeste werknemers gedurende vele jaren een groot aantal uren. De oorzaak van de burnout is dus te vinden in de langdurig hoge taakeisen. Opvallend is echter dat niet alleen deze kenmerken, maar vooral veranderingen in werkomstandigheden de burnout veroorzaken. Uit de onderzochte dossiers kwamen met name twee soorten veranderingen als oorzaak van burnout naar voren: een toename van de taakeisen, bijvoorbeeld door personeelstekort of organisatieveranderingen, en een verstoorde werkrelatie, zich uitend in tegenwerking, intimidatie en pestgedrag door de leidinggevende of een verstoring in de aansturing

The Edit Distance to k-Subsequence Universality

A word u is a subsequence of another word w if u can be obtained from w by deleting some of its letters. In the early 1970s, Imre Simon defined the relation ?_k (called now Simon-Congruence) as follows: two words having exactly the same set of subsequences of length at most k are ?_k-congruent. This relation was central in defining and analysing piecewise testable languages, but has found many applications in areas such as algorithmic learning theory, databases theory, or computational linguistics. Recently, it was shown that testing whether two words are ?_k-congruent can be done in optimal linear time. Thus, it is a natural next step to ask, for two words w and u which are not ?_k-equivalent, what is the minimal number of edit operations that we need to perform on w in order to obtain a word which is ?_k-equivalent to u. In this paper, we consider this problem in a setting which seems interesting: when u is a k-subsequence universal word. A word u with alph(u) = ? is called k-subsequence universal if the set of subsequences of length k of u contains all possible words of length k over ?. As such, our results are a series of efficient algorithms computing the edit distance from w to the language of k-subsequence universal words