Return to Work After Retirement: Contributing Factors and Health Implications

An issue of mounting importance in many industrialized nations, including Canada, is that of population aging. Because of fears that this trend could result in labour force shortages, many national governments and international organizations have encouraged policies aimed at prolonging the working life. This thesis builds on work that has been done to identify factors relevant to the likelihood of involvement in post-retirement work by examining how interactions among various demographic variables impact this likelihood. Furthermore, we investigated how post-retirement work is related to three measures of health and well-being. As well as confirming results obtained by others, we have found significant interactions between gender and marital status, current age, and age at retirement, that influence the likelihood of involvement in post-retirement work. We have also found that post-retirement work is generally associated with higher levels of health and well-being. The theoretical and policy implications of our outcomes are discussed

Changes in Neighborhood-Level Concentrated Disadvantage and Social Networks among Older Americans

Close social networks provide older persons with resources, including social support, that maintain their well-being. While scholarship shows how networks change over time, a dearth of research investigates changing social contexts as causes of network dynamics. Using the first two waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project survey (N = 1,776), this study shows how rising neighborhood-level concentrated disadvantage through the Great Recession of 2007–2009 was associated with smaller close networks, largely due to fewer new close ties gained, among older Americans. Worsening neighborhood circumstances pose obstacles to older residents’ acquisition of new close ties, including heightened fear, lower generalized trust, stress and depression, and declines in local institutions that attract both residents and nonresidents

Conditional on the Environment? The Contextual Embeddedness of Age, Health, and Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Remote Work among Older Europeans through the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 era lockdown measures resulted in many workers performing their employment tasks remotely. While identifying individual-level predictors of COVID-19 era remote work, scholarship has neglected heterogeneity based on contextual characteristics. Using the first COVID-19 module (2020) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 8,121) and multinomial logistic regression analyses, this study examined how country-level digitalization, stringency of government COVID-19 containment measures, and COVID-19 era excess mortality moderated how individual-level age, health, education, and income affected working partly or fully remotely among older Europeans (50-89 years) continuing to work through the pandemic. The central findings are that higher societal digitalization reduced the positive association between education and fully remote work, and greater country-level excess mortality accentuated how more education and poorer health increased the probability of fully remote work. These findings are interpreted through the fundamental cause theory of health and the health belief model. They further lead to recommendations that during future epidemics, policies and programs should address the remote working capabilities of older persons with fewer years of education, with fewer skills with modern digital technologies, and in worse health, especially within nations that are less digitally developed and harder hit by the epidemic in question

The effects of COVID-19-era unemployment and business closures upon the physical and mental health of older Europeans: Mediation through financial circumstances and social activity

COVID-19-era lockdown policies resulted in many older persons entering unemployment, facing financial difficulties and social restrictions, and experiencing declining health. Employing the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’s first COVID-19 module (summer 2020) (N=11,231) and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method for decomposition of effects within non-linear probability models (logistic regression modelling), we examined associations of pandemic-era lost work with older Europeans’ (50-80 years of age) self-assessed health, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, and mediation through households’ difficulties making ends meet, loneliness, and curtailed face-to-face contact with non-relatives. We find that lost work was associated with detriments in all three health outcomes. Total mediation was 23% for worsened self-assessed health, 42% for depressive symptoms, and 23% for anxiety symptoms. In all cases, combined mediation through the two social activity variables was approximately twice the magnitude of mediation through household financial difficulties. This evidence highlights the extent of employment’s value for friendship formation and sustenance, and social activity, during the pandemic-era social restrictions. This might be accentuated among older persons because of the social constrictions often concomitant to advancing age. These results emphasize that the social correlates of lost employment, beyond the financial concomitants, should receive thorough research and policy attention, perhaps especially for older adults during public health crises

Dependent on one’s past? how lifetime employment shapes later life work-care reconciliation

This article investigates the association between older Europeans’ earlier employment biographies and their probability of leaving the labour market when becoming a caregiver. Based on theoretical ideas about life course path-dependencies and gender role socialisation, we argue that accumulated durations of lifetime employment are associated with both labour market exits in general, and conditional on caregiving. We draw on six panel waves from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and use information from retrospective interviews (SHARELIFE) to measure earlier participation in six different types of (non-)employment between ages 20 and 50. We analyse a large sample of men and women aged 50–68 years in 18 European countries (n = 35,766 respondents). Based on fixed effects regression models, we find that employment biographies and current caregiving jointly affect labour market exits. Explanations for these linkages are gender-specific: Upon initiation of caregiving, men are more likely to extend working lives when their previous employment biographies are characterised by homemaking, pointing at neutralising deviance from non-standard male biographies. For women, we find evidence for path-dependencies: Concomitant to beginning caregiving, women are more likely to stay in the labour market the longer their previous employment was characterised by homemaking

Changes in neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage and older Americans’ cognitive functioning

Background: While associations of neighborhood conditions with cognitive functioning at older ages have been established, few studies have investigated with a dynamic perspective if changing neighborhood socioeconomic conditions affect older residents’ cognitive declines, and which putative factors mediate this relationship. Method: Using data from waves 2 (2010–2011) and 3 (2015–2016) of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) survey (n = 1837), ordinary least squares regressions and mediation analyses were conducted, adjusting for multiple confounders and testing eight putative mediators. Results: Worsening neighborhood socioeconomic circumstances were associated with cognitive declines. Changes in depressive symptoms, sizes of close social networks, and physical activity substantially mediated this relationship. Discussion: While 18.10% of the total effect occurred through these mechanisms, further pathways may work through contextual- and individual-level variables not assessed in the NSHAP

Gender and Relationship Status Interaction and Likelihood of Return to Work Post-Retirement

Population aging is an issue of mounting importance throughout the industrialized world. Concerns over labour force shortages have led to policies that prolong working life. Accordingly, present-day workforce participation patterns of older individuals are extensively varied. This study utilized the 2007 General Social Survey to examine factors associated with post-retirement paid work, focusing on the interaction between gender and relationship status, among Canadians aged 50 to 74 who had retired at least once. We find that although being in a relationship is associated with a higher likelihood of post-retirement work for men, the opposite is true for women. Our findings suggest that the gendered association between relationship status and post-retirement work results partly from the gendered associations between relationship status and one's motivation for learning and community involvement, career orientation, and sense of independence. Gendered meanings of relationship status are thus revealed through analysis of post-retirement work

The Role of Country-Level Availability and Generosity of Healthcare Services, and Old-Age Ageism for Missed Healthcare during the COVID-19 Pandemic Control Measures in Europe

Objectives: The effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on non-COVID-19-related healthcare need further investigation. Methods: Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe’s COVID-19 module (2020) (N = 57,025), country-level data from the European Social Survey (2008) and OECD (2020), and logistic regressions, this study examines predictors of older Europeans’ forgone, postponed, and denied healthcare during the pandemic. Results: Country-level availability of physicians, healthcare systems’ generosity, and beliefs that older persons burden healthcare systems all increased forgone healthcare. Healthcare system generosity increased postponed and denied healthcare. Greater medical resources decreased denied healthcare. Furthermore, missed healthcare varied by individual-level gender (higher rates among women), age, education, and health. Discussion: This study reveals predictors of missed healthcare during the pandemic. To decrease unintended health consequences of a pandemic, both individual-level determinants, such as gender and health, and contextual-level determinants, such as healthcare systems’ characteristics, should be considered in research and practice

As Goes the City? Older Americans’ Home Upkeep in the Aftermath of the Great Recession

The private home is a crucial site in the aging process, yet the upkeep of this physical space often poses a challenge for community-dwelling older adults. Previous efforts to explain variation in disorderly household conditions have relied on individual-level characteristics, but ecological perspectives propose that home environments are inescapably nested within the dynamic socioeconomic circumstances of surrounding spatial contexts, such as the metro area. We address this ecological embeddedness in the context of the Great Recession, an event in which some U.S. cities saw pronounced and persistent declines across multiple economic indicators while other areas rebounded more rapidly. Panel data (2005–6 and 2010–11) from a national survey of older adults were linked to interviewer home evaluations and city-level economic data. Results from fixed-effects regression support the hypothesis that older adults dwelling in struggling cities experienced an uptick in disorderly household conditions. Findings emphasize the importance of city-specificity when probing effects of a downturn. Observing changes in home upkeep also underscores the myriad ways in which a city’s most vulnerable residents— older adults, in particular—are affected by its economic fortunes

For everything a season? A month-by-month analysis of social network resources in later life

It is widely acknowledged that informal social ties provide older persons with many resources that serve to protect and improve their levels of health and well-being. Most studies on this topic, however, ignore the month or season of the year during which data was accumulated. This study proposes two hypotheses to explain seniors' social network resources over the calendar year: the “fluctuation hypothesis”, which proposes that seasonal variation, in the form of weather fluctuations, institutional calendars, and holidays, might influence the social lives and resources of older persons, and the “network stability” perspective, which, informed by tenets of convoy theory and socioemotional selectivity theory, emphasizes the increasing importance of close network ties as individuals age and the stability of these ties. Using two waves (2005e2006 and 2010e2011) of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling older adults aged 57e85 in the United States, we examine a diverse set of nine social connectedness outcomes. Results, overall, support the network stability perspective, as the only social connectedness outcome found to significantly vary by month of year was average closeness with network members. We conclude by suggesting some methodological considerations for survey research and by noting how these findings complement the growing literature on inter-year fluctuation in social networks and social support. Changes in older adults’ networks, while frequently observable over the course of years, do not seem to be seasonally patterned