Research on social robots in dementia care has focused on their effects, for example in relation to the patients’ wellbeing or the care-givers’ working environment. Such approaches to social robots treat them as stable objects with a singular function. Combining social gerontology with social studies of science, the current study offers a new angle by asking: How do patients and care-givers in care homes for older people establish a shared definition of the situation in interactions involving robot animals? Drawing on ethnography and multimodal conversation analysis of 211 minutes of video recordings in two care homes in Sweden, we demonstrate the embodied work by which participants in interactions establish activities with robot animals. In contrast to the ideal of transparency in social robotics, we show that a central affordance of the robots is their vagueness, which allows for their inclusion in playful interactions. Playful framings of the robots highlight their social functions and downplay care-giver–patient asymmetries. However, situations where patients resist a playful frame actualise a dilemma of social inclusion, on the one hand, and the right to not participate in play, on the other. Showing this, the article contributes to knowledge on how people age with technology; in particular, it draws attention to the limits of an ideal of transparency when social robots are included in dementia care.

Rapid demographic changes and heavy reliance on informal care pose significant challenges to meeting long-term care (LTC) needs in China. Understanding changes in unmet LTC needs across different times and places can inform future LTC system planning and care resource allocation, identifying emerging care needs and services gaps in different regions. Drawing on data from 6,030 urban and 5,070 rural residents in the Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey 2005–2017/18, this study investigates variations in unmet LTC needs across different age groups, periods and birth cohorts among Chinese older adults and their place-based rural–urban differences. We applied the age-period-cohort interaction model to disentangle the three temporal processes, and found that, overall, rural older adults experienced higher risk of unmet LTC needs and had larger variation in age effects, yet the age, period and cohort effects on unmet needs among rural older people differed from their urban counterparts. Although ‘younger’ older adults (aged below 85) had fewer care needs than older adults, they had a higher risk of experiencing unmet needs. The risk of having unmet needs did not change significantly over the 12 years, though unmet LTC needs were more pronounced among more-recent cohorts than previous generations, especially in urban areas. The findings contribute to the social gerontology debate regarding changing patterns in unmet LTC needs, and provide crucial policy insights, underscoring the necessity of targeted interventions to address ‘younger’ older adults’ care needs and increased investmed in the formal LTC system to tackle the escalating care gap.

Understanding how to improve the physical and cognitive accessibility of visitor economy businesses and organisations wanting to offer nature-based outdoor pursuits for people with dementia is key to supporting their inclusion and agency. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the experiences, needs and preferences of people with dementia participating in nature-based outdoor pursuits in their leisure time. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 people with dementia and 15 family members and subjected to thematic analysis. Four themes related to inclusion for people with dementia and their family members reflected diversity in individual needs and preferences for engaging with nature-based outdoor pursuits, their own adaptations to maintain access including accommodating risk, how cognitive and physical accessibility can be supported by businesses, and which practical and psychosocial barriers prevent inclusion. Learning from people with dementia and their family members has helped bridge the gap to their inclusion in nature-based outdoor pursuits. Their insights will inform the development of such pursuits by businesses and organisations as well as future work into risk decision-making.

The literature has shown that, in developing countries, large cash transfers to older people improve the wellbeing of the recipients and their families. While social pensions have recently emerged in East Asia to deliver small cash benefits to older people, there is little consistent evidence of their effects. We examine the effects of the Basic Pension Scheme, a social pension in South Korea, on income and consumption poverty among older adults. We apply a difference-in-differences event study design and other complementary approaches to data covering the full period of program development from 2006 to 2021. The results show that the social pension decreases income poverty but not consumption poverty. While this study analysed the best data currently available, using better-quality data in future research would enable more robust analysis. Further research is also warranted to find how to improve the effectiveness of a non-contributory pension programme as a tool for reducing income and consumption poverty among older adults.

Issues of ‘disability’ and ‘ageing’ are usually approached separately in theorising, activism and policy making. Yet people with disabilities age and many people will experience disability if they live long enough. Human rights approaches to disability enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) are not often applied to older people experiencing disability. This article presents findings of a systematic qualitative analysis of reports made by 28 European states to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the independent body that monitors CRPD implementation, focusing particularly on Article 19 CRPD (‘Living independently and being included in the community’). While states’ reports refer to older people or ageing in different contexts, their approach can be characterised as ambivalent. Reports tend to constitute older people experiencing disability as ‘older’ rather than ‘disabled’; they do not demonstrate a thorough engagement with disability experienced in older age, and display a limited focus on people ageing with lifelong disability. Several reports detail exclusions of ‘older people’ from disability supports to live in the community and some exclude impairments associated with ageing from definitions of what ‘disability’ is. The reports provide almost no evidence of consultation with organisations working on ageing. The article concludes that while the CRPD’s potential to contribute to realising rights for older people with disabilities is under-recognised among scholars and non-governmental organisations, the fact that states refer to older people in their reporting under the CRPD provides a starting point for more engagement.

As the population of Aotearoa New Zealand ages, informal family carers will play an increasingly important role in caring for older adults at home. Multi-generational living arrangements are a growing trend, particularly among Māori communities, where caring for older relatives within the family home is widespread. This article uses in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Māori whānau (extended family members) caring for kaumātua (older family members) at home to explore how carers experienced care coordination in the broader care collective. The findings centred on three interconnected factors that described the collective organisation of care: (1) whānau care as normal; (2) whānau care as collective coordination; and (3) whānau carer knowledge and needs as unseen. The findings show that although whānau care of kaumātua is highly valued, ‘structural holes’ within care systems contribute to challenges in care coordination. Despite extensive whānau support for kaumātua, primary carers often felt that their knowledge, preferences and self-care needs remained unseen and not translatable to those outside the everyday care situation. Rather than assuming an artificial binary difference between ‘collective’ and ‘individually oriented’ care contexts and cultures, analysing the cultural norms surrounding whānau care-giving confirms that collective care system members face similar and different challenges to carers with smaller caring capacities.

The ability and knowledge to manage financial tasks may be compromised in old age, especially when the need to navigate the care and social benefit systems increases. Managing financial tasks may consist of a variety of actions of both the older people themselves and their representatives, often family members. This study explored how financial tasks related to the care and everyday life of older people who need long-term care are managed by using the ideas of modalities of agency and distributed agency. We analysed interviews of 19 older persons and their family members with a qualitative case analysis. All the older persons who participated in the study distributed the agency in financial tasks among their family members, but to different levels and for different reasons. We identified three types of distributed agency – inevitable, assimilated and minimal distributed agency – in which the older persons’ knowledge about financial tasks and their ability to manage financial tasks differed. Within these types, the cases differed in terms of the know-how of the family members and the reasons why the older people’s knowledge about financial tasks or their ability to manage their financial tasks were diminished. We conclude that older persons with long-term care needs require help in regard to financial tasks, and the older people’s and their family members’ ability to manage financial tasks could be enhanced by making the benefit systems and online banking more user-friendly and by improving the help from care staff.

Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this research investigates how post-retirement employment influences older people’s expenditure in urban China. By broadening the understanding of post-retirement employment behaviour from a consumer welfare perspective, this study expands the literature on retirement consumption and provides theoretical explanations, empirical insights and policy recommendations. The findings reveal that post-retirement employment behaviour reduces urban retirees’ household expenditure and has a more significant effect on men than on women, but this effect diminishes as consumption levels rise. Increasing income, promoting social participation and improving subjective health outcomes are all potential channels through which post-retirement employment can affect consumption. Further analysis shows two main reasons why post-retirement employment reduces older people’s expenditure: first, the increase in subjective health levels resulting from post-retirement employment reduces healthcare expenditure; second, post-retirement employment does not promote social participation and self-rated health for all consumption levels and all genders of retirees – it also decreases expenditure. Preliminary evidence suggests that internet use positively moderates the negative impact of post-retirement employment on older people’s expenditure. These findings provide policy implications for retirement policies and the promotion of the silver economy.

Frailty is a common but complex phenomenon that is approached from theoretical and professional perspectives but rarely from the perspectives of older people and their essential stakeholders. Different or opposing perspectives on frailty at personal, organisational, and community levels can negatively affect care for frail older people. This systematic integrative review synthesises the perspectives on frailty of older people, health/social care professionals, informal caregivers, managers and policymakers, using thematic analysis. We use the Joanna Briggs Institute–Critical Appraisal Checklist to appraise the quality of 52 qualitative and mixed-method studies drawn from the PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Embase, and Web of Science databases (inception–December 2023). Of these, 33 include the perspectives of older people, 27 of health/social care professionals, four of managers, and six of informal caregivers. Structuring the perspectives along six themes – ‘the multi-dimensional nature of frailty’, ‘the dynamics of frailty’, ‘the complexity of frailty’, ‘frailty in relation to age’, ‘frailty in relation to health’ and ‘frailty in relation to dependence’ – revealed substantive similarities in the conceptualisation of frailty between older people and professionals, e.g. regarding frailty’s dynamic and multi-dimensional nature. However, older people and professionals differ in their interpretations of frailty: older people take a personal view, while professionals take a more practical view. The identified discrepancies in perspectives may affect care relationships and care for frail older people. Therefore, we advocate a systems approach that incorporates multiple perspectives to form a comprehensive view of frailty and allows for a situation-specific shared understanding of frailty in older people.

Growing numbers of people help and support family members, friends or others due to long-term health problems, disability or older age–related needs. While care-giving can bring fulfilment and meaning to peoples’ lives, it can negatively affect individuals’ financial wellbeing. Much of the evidence in this area is quantitative, while the subjective, in-depth experience of how unpaid care decisions affect financial wellbeing remains relatively underexplored. This scoping review explores what is known about how unpaid carers experience and understand the financial consequences of providing care. It identified 35 studies containing qualitative evidence and, through thematic analysis, identified four overarching themes: (1) direct and indirect costs of caring; (2) social, cultural and institutional care and work decision-making; (3) the unequal cost of caring; and (4) personal finance and carer wellbeing. Findings indicate that unpaid caring affects financial wellbeing in multiple, overlapping ways. The financial consequences are experienced unequally, with systems, circumstances and contexts serving to exacerbate or reduce these negative effects. Crucially, our analysis reveals the paucity of qualitative research specifically focused on unpaid carers’ financial wellbeing. There is a significant gap in the literature regarding whether, and how, individuals understand the future financial implications of unpaid care-giving, or whether longer-term financial consequences are considered when making decisions about care. Future research designed to address this gap, with greater emphasis on the personal, social and structural influences on care-related financial decision-making, could offer important insights for developing policies and practices aimed at improving the financial wellbeing of carers as they age.

Gender and age are central organising principles of social relations, with socially constructed gendered and age-based norms influencing patterns of social behaviour, power and inequality. Despite recent literature highlighting the importance of subjective measures of equality, including as a significant predictor of wellbeing, there is a gap in studies focused on subjective equality in research on ageing. Drawing on an equality ranking exercise and life herstory interviews with 20 older-aged women (65+) in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article focuses on the intersectionality of age and gender, analysing the ways in which participants constructed their experiences of equality over the lifecourse from their standpoint as older-aged women. The analysis reveals a significant rise in subjective equality from childhood to older age, with more varied responses in childhood and a convergence of responses from adolescence onwards. Participants’ constructions of equality differed: age was the dominant construct of equality women ascribed to their childhood years, while gender inequality came to the fore during their teenage years. In early to mid-adulthood, women found ways to navigate gendered inequality in various life domains, while in older adulthood equality was constructed as freedom and life satisfaction. This trajectory suggests that the frames individuals use to make sense of equality and their personal experiences are not fixed; they are fluid and shift throughout the lifecourse.

Mutual support among residents in collaborative housing for older people presents an alternative care model to family or formal social care provided in individuals’ homes or specialised care facilities. This is particularly the case in cohousing, where residents commit to mutual support and exercise autonomy through self-governance. Cohousing also supports the ageing processes by fostering greater wellbeing and significantly lessening social isolation and loneliness. Further, it offers the potential for older people to collectively maintain greater agency in later life and manage age-related health decline. Despite a growing body of literature on ageing and collaborative housing, to date little research has explored how later-life transitions are negotiated among residents of collaborative housing. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative research on collaborative housing communities in England between 2021 and 2023, this article examines age-related challenges residents face in cohousing, and how they respond to such changing care needs individually and collectively. Analysing data from two waves of fieldwork in three cohousing communities, it examines how the mutual-support functions of the communities act as an intermediary to facilitate communication with different parties, formal and informal care provision and decision-making. The intermediary role tends not to replace the need for formal social care or the involvement of family but provides a supportive buffer between the individual and the family and formal services. Despite the lack of built-in care services placing a potentially heavier burden on residents, the ‘intentional’ commitment to mutual support in cohousing contributes significantly to extending agency in later life.

There is a need for new imaginaries of care and social health for people living with dementia at home. Day programmes are one ‘care in the community’ solution that requires further theorisation to ensure that its empirical base can usefully guide policy. In this paper we contribute to theorising day programmes through an ethnographic case study of one woman living with dementia at home using a day programme. We collected data through observations, interviews and artefacts. We observed Peg, whose case story is central in this paper, over 9 months for a total of 61 hours at the day programme, as well as during 16 hours of observation at her home and 2 community outings. We use a material semiotic approach to thinking about the day programme as a health ‘technology in practice’ to challenge the taken-for-granted ideas of day programmes as neutral, stable, bounded spaces. Peg’s case story is illustrative of how a day programme and its scripts come into relation with an arrangement of family care and life at home with dementia. At times the configuration of this arrangement works to provide a sort of stabilising distribution of care and space to allow Peg and her family to go on in the day-to-day life with dementia. At other times the arrangement may create limits to the care made possible. We argue that how we conceptualise and study day programmes and their relations to home and the broader care infrastructure affects the possibilities of care they can enact.

This study contributes to an emerging body of research that combines new mobilities and gerontological perspectives. Most previous studies on older adults’ mobilities have analysed data collected at a single point in time and there is a need for studies that explore the meanings of movement and non-movement over time, especially in relation to unexpected life events. This work explores the meanings of older adults’ abruptly changing everyday (im)mobilities before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. It draws from qualitative interviews conducted with 11 older adults in a Finnish suburb in autumn 2019 and spring 2020, and focuses on grocery shopping, which most of the participants did themselves before the pandemic, but not during it. The findings provide insight into how meanings of everyday (im)mobilities are formed as older individuals (re)negotiate their relationships with their changing places of ageing. The participants’ views of their disrupted everyday mobilities were shaped by active person–place engagements. On one hand, the findings highlight that individuals are not at the mercy of their circumstances; they possess agency that can enable maintaining a sense of self and independence even in restricted mobility situations. On the other hand, the findings reveal relationalities that explain why sudden mobility loss often leads to diminished wellbeing. The relational nature of the meanings of (im)mobility implies that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to supporting older adults who face mobility difficulties while ageing in their homes. It is crucial to recognise the diversity of older adults and to support their individual lifestyles.

Loneliness and social isolation among older adults are emerging public health concerns. Older adults from ethnic minority communities or with immigration backgrounds may be particularly vulnerable when encountering loneliness and social isolation due to the double jeopardy of their old age and minority status. The goal of this study is to conduct a scoping review of published journal articles on ethnic minority/immigrant older adults' loneliness and social isolation experiences to show the extent, range and nature of empirical studies in this area across several high-income countries (i.e. European countries, United States of America (USA), Canada, Australia and New Zealand). This review uses Arksey and O'Malley's five-state framework, a well-established scoping review method. We identify and analyse 76 articles published between 1983 and 2021. This evidence base is largely US-focused (54%) with the vast majority (76%) having a quantitative design. We summarise and map factors of loneliness and social isolation into a multi-dimensional socio-ecological model. By doing so, we show how ethnicity/immigration-specific factors and general factors intersect in multiple dimensions across places and time, shaping ethnic minority/immigrant older adults' heterogeneous experiences of loneliness and social isolation. Several critical gaps that should be at the forefront of future research are highlighted and discussed.

International migrants face barriers when accessing health-care in their destination countries. For older migrants, there are additional difficulties due to their age and associated health conditions. Chinese migrants are an understudied group with culture-specific barriers in addition to those shared with other migrant groups. This review aims to understand the barriers and facilitators to health-care access faced by older Chinese migrants in high-income countries. Literature from MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE, Scopus, CINAHL Plus and ProQuest (1 January 2000 to 6 October 2021) were retrieved. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies focusing on older Chinese migrants' access to, utilisation of and satisfaction with health-care services in high-income countries were included. Studies were appraised using checklists from the Joanna Briggs Institute and the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. Qualitative and quantitative data were extracted and analysed narratively to identify barriers and facilitators to accessing health-care, then applied to Levesque's five-step health-care access journey framework. We included 33 studies in the analysis. Qualitative evidence identified barriers and facilitators to health-care access in four categories: health-care system, social factors, personal factors and health-care interactions. Quantitative studies found that health status and having insurance were positively associated with using non-preventive care, while time of residence and physician's recommendations were positively associated with using preventive care. Factors that influence older Chinese migrants' access to health care include practical barriers (communication, time and cost), social support (family and community), perceptions of health and care needs (beliefs and knowledge) and interactions with health-care professionals (patient–physician trust and support from physicians). Efforts to overcome universal barriers, acknowledgement of cultural contexts, improvements in translation services, and involvement of Chinese families and communities in health-care outreach will benefit this population.

Few previous studies have investigated how socioeconomic differences in labour market exit have changed after restrictions in social insurance policies. The aim of this register-based study is to investigate how early labour market exit pathways among older men and women with different levels of education changed after major restrictive social insurance and retirement policy reforms in Sweden. Cohort 1 (pre-reform) consisted of individuals who were 60 or 61 years old in 2005 (N = 186,145) and Cohort 2 (post-reform) consisted of individuals who were 60 or 61 years old in 2012 (N = 176,216). Educational differences in four labour market exit pathways were investigated using Cox proportional hazards regression; the exit pathways were disability pension, early old-age pension with and without income respectively, and no income for two consecutive years. As expected, exits through disability pension were rarer in Cohort 2. Lower education was also more strongly associated with disability pension in Cohort 2. Parallel to this, lower education showed a stronger association with both early old-age pension types in Cohort 2. Additionally, a tendency towards a relatively higher likelihood of earning no income was seen among the less educated. Increases in inequalities tended to be greater for women. Our results indicate that educational inequalities in labour market exit have grown significantly after restrictions in social insurance and changes in retirement policies, which can have negative financial repercussions for those already in a vulnerable position. These results indicate that careful analyses of effects on disparities are needed before making major changes in welfare systems.