European Journal of Ageing

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, stringent measures were implemented in most countries to limit social contact between residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) and visitors. The objective of this scoping review was to identify and map evidence of direct and indirect consequences of contact restrictions, guided by three conceptual perspectives: (1) stress and learned helplessness (i.e., failure to use coping behaviors even when they are available and actionalble); (2) social contact loss; and (3) 'total institution' (i...

Increasing the pension age as a dominant solution to population ageing does not bring desirable outcomes, if not accompanied by other essential measures in lifelong learning and fighting age discrimination. Moreover, rapid digitalisation and automation in the labour market bring additional uncertainties for the growing group of older workers. The analysis is based on the SHARE data from Waves 5, 6, and 7 and examines predictors of retirement intentions by two different estimation methods. While digital skills are positively associated with a willingness to stay in the labour market in the random-effect modelling, fixed-effects regression shows no correlation between digital skills and retirement intentions...

We investigate (a) how the proportion of European grandparents providing childcare changed over a period of 15 years, (b) how these proportions differ by gender and education, and (c) how countries not covered in earlier analyses fit into previously identified regional patterns of grandparental childcare in Europe. Using data from Waves 1, 2, and 8 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), our descriptive analysis provides estimates of the prevalence and intensity of grandparental childcare in 26 European countries as well as of the changes therein over time and across socio-demographically defined groups...

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This study aims to contribute to the growing interest in the consequences of migration for loneliness by investigating the role of generational status across various age groups in countries with differing integration policies and attitudes towards immigrants. Using data from rounds 5, 6 and 7 of the European Social Survey, I conducted logistic multilevel models on a sample of 121,835 respondents aged 18 years and older, residing in 26 countries. Loneliness was assessed based on a single-item item question from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies of Depression scale...

OBJECT: The cognitive complaints encountered in late-life depression (LLD) make it difficult to distinguish from amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on an analysis of neurocognitive disorders. The hypothesis of the early impairment of semantic memory in AD and aMCI is considered a potential differential cognitive clue, but the absence of this impairment has not yet been confirmed in  LLD. METHOD: Based on the PRISMA method, we systematically seek neuropsychological assessments of individuals with LLD, the present study included 31 studies representing 3291 controls and 2820 people with LLD...

Some studies show that the protective effect of higher income on health weakens with old age (age-as-leveller pattern), whereas others show that it strengthens with old age (cumulative advantage/disadvantage pattern). Many existing studies are limited in that they use single-country and/or single-timepoint designs. To overcome these limitations and better understand how the income-health gradient evolves in older age, we used cross-national and longitudinal data of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (2004-2019, N = 73,407) and the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011-2018, N = 10,067)...

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Sleep duration has been shown to associate with cognitive function, but little is known about the short-term effect of sleep duration on the previous night. This study examines how usual sleep duration and previous night's sleep duration are associated with cognitive function in older adults. METHODS: The study population consisted of 2949 adults aged 59-92 years (mean 72.6, SD 5.7) derived from three Finnish cohorts. Participants' self-reported usual sleep duration was categorized into short (< 7 h, 19%), mid-range (7- < 9 h, 64%), and long (≥ 9 h, 17%)...

Early labour market exit of large birth cohorts will put pressure on the social security systems of many European countries, especially Germany. Despite political efforts, many people retire before the statutory retirement age. A well-known predictor of retirement is health, which, in turn, is influenced by psychosocial working conditions such as work-related stress. This study examined whether work stress is associated with early labour market exit. In addition, we investigated whether health mediates this association...

There is a gap in knowledge about factors associated with the duration of late life dependency. In this study, we measured how the age at onset of late life dependency relates to the time spent with late life dependency. Using Swedish register data, we identified people 70 + who entered the period of late life dependency (measured by entering long-term care for help with PADLs) between June and December 2008. We followed this cohort (n = 17,515) for 7 years, or until death. We used Laplace regression models to estimate the median number of months with late life dependency by age group, gender, level of education and country of birth...

BACKGROUND: Detecting impaired naming capacity contributes to the detection of mild (MildND) and major (MajorND) neurocognitive disorder due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Test for Finding Word retrieval deficits (WoFi) is a new, 50-item, auditory stimuli-based instrument. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to adapt WoFi to the Greek language, to develop a short version of WoFi (WoFi-brief), to compare the item frequency and the utility of both instruments with the naming subtest of the widely used Addenbrooke's cognitive examination III (ACEIIINaming) in detecting MildND and MajorND due to AD...

This research aims to better understand the association of personality traits (PT)-Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism-with health literacy (HL) skills of adults aged 58 years and older in a nationally representative sample from Switzerland. Analyses were conducted on a subsample (n = 1546) of respondents living in Switzerland from wave 8 (2019/2020) of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). PT were assessed with the Big-Five inventory ten (BFI-10)...

Emotion regulation is proposed to have a salient role in optimal aging. However, currently used measures of emotion regulation have not been validated for older adults. Therefore, we evaluated the psychometric properties of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-short form (DERS-16) in a large Norwegian sample consisting of individuals between 70 and 95 years (n = 2525). Tests of internal consistency, reliability, assessment of intra-domain correlations, and confirmatory factor analyses were performed...

Gerontechnology as multidisciplinary research has expanded in recent years due to its significant role in ensuring better care and improved quality of life for older adults and their caregivers. With a substantial increase in studies on reasons behind less inclination of older individuals to accept gerontechnology, barriers to its non-acceptance appear to be persistent. In addition, there is a dearth of research on the adoption of gerontechnology from the perspectives of social caregivers, given that caregivers bear a substantial burden in the form of chronic stress, which adversely affects their health and that of older people...

Research from a range of disciplines highlights the need to adopt a life course perspective that considers earlier life courses to explain outcomes in later life (e.g. later life health, cognitive ageing or retirement behaviour). This includes a more comprehensive assessment of earlier life courses over time and of how they are shaped by societal and political contexts. But quantitative data with detailed information on life courses that allow to address these questions are rare. Or, in case the data are available, the data are rather difficult to handle and appears to be underused...

Recent studies report significant increases in retirement ages over the past two to three decades in most countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development-increases that research has attributed mainly to changes in the legislative frameworks for retirement in these countries. Using unique data from the Danish Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this study investigates whether and, if so to what extent, changes to the workforce in terms of gender, education, employment status (employed or self-employed) and health contribute to explaining differences in retirement ages between the cohorts born in 1935 and 1950...

Cognitive Reserve (CR) is often assessed with surveys spanning demographic, lifestyle, and socio-behavioral variables. The role of both past and current life experiences on CR has, however, rarely been examined. We developed the Current and Retrospective Cognitive Reserve (2CR) survey to assess classical CR proxies (socio-economic status, engagement in leisure and social activities) and other dimensions of potential importance (family engagement, religious/spiritual activity) both currently (CRc; in later adulthood) and retrospectively (CRr; as recalled from younger adulthood)...

Over the course of 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted lives globally. In the UK, unemployment rate continued to increase during and post-lockdown periods, and job security and financial wellbeing deteriorated. It is important to understand whether individual decisions related to retirement plans have changed systematically as a result of the pandemic, especially among older adults who experienced greater rates of pandemic unemployment. Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this article examines changes in retirement plans of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and estimates the impact of health and financial circumstances on these changes...

This study set out to evaluate the association between job demands at baseline and physical performance over a six-year period across three cohorts of older Dutch workers examined 10 years apart. Data were drawn from three cohorts (1992-1999, 2002-2009 and 2012-2019) of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam. Individuals aged 55-65 years from each cohort who worked for pay were included (n = 274, n = 416, n = 618, respectively). Physical performance was measured using gait speed and chair stand performance...

BACKGROUND: Frailty is a geriatric syndrome with repercussions on health, disability, and dependency. OBJECTIVES: To assess health resource use and costs attributable to frailty in the aged population. METHODS: A population-based observational longitudinal study was performed, with follow-up from January 2018 to December 2019. Data were obtained retrospectively from computerized primary care and hospital medical records. The study population included all inhabitants aged ≥ 65 years ascribed to 3 primary care centres in Barcelona (Spain)...