As more people experience old age as a time of growth and productivity, more research is needed that explores how they master everyday life. This paper reports on a qualitative study that explored how ten older women age 90 years or more experience and cope with the challenges of everyday life with a salutogenic perspective. The findings suggest that health resources such as positive expectation, reflection and adaptation, function and active contribution, relations and home, contribute to the health capital of women. These health resources were of importance for the women's experience of comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness in daily life. Health capital is a meaningful concept for understanding coping in everyday life by older people.

This article summarizes previous employment histories and studies associations between types of histories and quality of life in older ages. Retrospective information from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) was used and the occupational situation for each age between 30 and 65 of 4,808 men and 4,907 women aged 65 or older in Europe was considered. Similar histories were regrouped using sequence analyses, and multi-level modelling was applied to study associations with quality of life. To avoid reverse causality, individuals with poor health prior to or during their working life were excluded. Men's employment histories were dominated by long periods of paid employment that ended in retirement (‘regular’ histories). Women's histories were more diverse and also involved domestic work, either preceding regular careers (‘mixed’ histories) or dominating working life (‘home-maker’ histories). The highest quality of life was found among women with mixed histories and among men with regular histories and late retirement. In contrast, retirement between 55 and 60 (but not earlier) and regular histories ending in unemployment or domestic work (for men only) were related to lower quality of life, as well as home-maker histories in the case of women. Findings remain significant after controlling for social position, partnership and parental history, as well as income in older ages. Results point to the importance of continuous employment for health and wellbeing, not only during the working life, but also after labour market exit.

This paper examines how care-giving to adults and/or children and care-receiving is associated with the health and wellbeing of older people aged 50+ in rural South Africa. Data used are from a cross-sectional survey adapted from World Health Organization's Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted in 2009/10 in rural South Africa. Bivariate statistics and multivariate logistical regression were used to assess the relationship between care-giving and/or care-receiving with functional disability, quality of life or emotional wellbeing, and self-rated health status, adjusted for socio-demographic factors. Sixty-three per cent of 422 older people were care-givers to at least one young adult or child; 27 per cent of older people were care-givers due to HIV-related reasons in young adults; 84 per cent of participants were care-recipients mainly from adult children, grandchildren and spouse. In logistic regressions adjusting for sex, age, marital status, education, receipt of grants, household headship, household wealth and HIV status, care-giving was statistically significantly associated with good functional ability as measured by ability to perform activities of daily living. This relationship was stronger for older people providing care-giving to adults than to children. In contrast, care-givers were less likely to report good emotional wellbeing; again the relationship was stronger for care-givers to adults than children. Simultaneous care-giving and -receiving was likewise associated with good functional ability, but about a 47 per cent lower chance of good emotional wellbeing. Participants who were HIV-infected were more likely to be in better health but less likely to be receiving care than those who were HIV-affected. Our findings suggest a strong relationship between care-giving and poor emotional wellbeing via an economic or psychological stressor pathway. Interventions that improve older people's socio-economic circumstances and reduce financial hardship as well as those that provide social support would go some way towards mitigating this relationship.

In this paper we study if and how persons with dementia are orally positioned by others, and how they position themselves while participating in assessment meetings held in order to discuss access to supportive services. We analysed five assessment meetings where two older persons (one diagnosed with dementia and one without a dementia diagnosis) participated to investigate whether the person with dementia is positioned differently than the other old person. Interactional phenomena used to position the person with dementia were identified by interactional analysis. We identified six phenomena that positioned the person with dementia as an individual with less interactional competence than the other participants: ignoring the person with dementia; voicing the feelings, capacity or opinion of the person with dementia; posing questions implying lack of competence; others' use of diagnosis; self-(re)positioning; and elderspeak. Persons with dementia are often orally positioned as less competent, indicating that they suffer further from discrimination than other older persons. We suggest that this has an impact on the participation of people with dementia in negotiations regarding their future care. The results indicate that social workers should be made aware that negative positioning exists and how it may affect the ability of people with dementia to contribute to discussions about their everyday life. Social workers should be encouraged to find strategies to reduce negative positioning in interaction.

The aim of this article is to explore how older people with intellectual disability (ID), who live in group accommodation, describe their lived experience in relation to ageing and later life. The article is based on a study with a phenomenological approach, grounded on the concept of life-world. Individual, qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 people with ID (five men, seven women), between the ages of 48 and 71 (mean=64), who lived in four different group accommodation units in southern Sweden. A descriptive phenomenological analysis method was used, which disclosed a structure consisting of themes and sub-themes. The findings of the study reveal the informants' lived experience of ageing and later life as a multifaceted phenomenon, expressed through the two themes, ‘age as a process of change’ and ‘existential aspects of ageing’, each with three sub-themes. The body is an essential element in their experience of ageing and growing old, and in how this experience is expressed. The study also found social, cultural and historical dimensions of the life-world to be important in the informants' experience of ageing and later life. This supports understanding of the existence of a collective life-world for older people with ID, the unique experiences the informants share because of their disability and its consequences for their lifecourse.

This article is based upon qualitative research carried out with members of the Sikh community caring for a person with dementia. Previous research with South Asian carers of people with dementia has reported problems with both access to, and use of, health and social care services namely due to cultural and language barriers within existing services. The research reported in this article sought for an in-depth understanding of the experiences of Sikhs caring for their family member with dementia. The aim of the research was to explore how migration experiences and life histories impact on perceptions and experiences of caring for a family member with dementia for Sikhs living in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, United Kingdom. The research, undertaken by the author, applied a biographical approach using narrative interviews. Twelve Sikh carers of a family member with dementia were interviewed. Findings highlighted that migration experiences and migration identities are important for understanding participants’ experiences of services and experiences of caring for a family member with dementia. Person-centred dementia care as a model for practice highlights the importance of understanding life histories to support people to live well with dementia, including their family carers. This paper reinforces this message, demonstrating the impact of specific migration experiences on the experiences of caring for a family member with dementia.

This study reviews theory and results from developmental psychology to examine age differences in workplace achievement goals. We investigated whether goal level decreases with age and, by comparing the relative strength of different goals within individuals, we examined whether dominant achievement goals are related to age. In a large sample of employees (N=747), older workers' higher affective commitment and intrinsic motivation compensated for age-related decline in the importance of achievement goals. Whether learning-approach and learning-avoidance were dominant goals was not related to age but instead to skill level, affective commitment and intrinsically satisfying work. Dominant performance-approach goals were more common among males. Performance-avoidance was most likely to be a dominant goal among older males. Moreover, with age, performance-goal orientations had increasingly maladaptive consequences for self-efficacy and affect at work.

This article is about dementia disease in the context of transnational migration. Focusing on the example of Pakistani immigrants in Norway, the article explores response processes surrounding signs and symptoms of dementia. Particular attention is lent to understanding how Norwegian-Pakistani families ‘negotiate dementia’ in the space between their own imported, culturally defined system of cure and care, and the Norwegian health-care culture, which is characterised by an inclination towards public care and biomedical intervention. Based on field observations and in-depth interviews with Norwegian-Pakistani families and hospital professionals working with dementia, we show that the centrality of the traditional family in Norwegian-Pakistanis' identity claims has significant implications for how Norwegian-Pakistanis relate to the Norwegian health-care culture, and for how signs and symptoms of cognitive decline are read and responded to in a migratory context.

‘Ageing in place’ initiatives form an important part of broader ‘ageing well’ strategies that are being developed in response to demographic change. Increasingly, it is acknowledged that it is important to understand how individuals shape and modify the space within their own home and immediate environment to facilitate flexible solutions in the event of a loss of independence. The research presented here aims to understand how individuals construct the space both within their own home and their immediate surroundings and how this construction is linked to their own perception of ageing and growing old. A thematic analysis of 28 qualitative interviews resulted in two differentiated responses in relation to home adaptations: those respondents who had acted to modify their home and environment and those who instead sought to delay or ‘put off’ any modifications. The results demonstrate the multi-dimensional experience of ageing, the diversity of types of home environment, and the interplay between compensatory solutions and the social contexts within which they take place. The need for a more holistic approach that takes into account factors such as an individual's experience of ageing is suggested in order to understand the use of space in home environments and the adaptations that are made to them. Policy initiatives for ‘ageing in place’ can be reinforced by closer user involvement.

Over the last few decades, increasing attention has been paid to the issue of wellbeing among older people, and life satisfaction has been used as an indicator to evaluate older people's life conditions. This paper sheds some light on this topic with reference to Italy, a country characterised by an increasing ageing population. The aim is to examine life satisfaction among people aged 65 and older and its predictors. We adopt a gender approach to examine whether – as suggested by the literature – older men and women have different sources of satisfaction. We test this hypothesis in Italy, a country still characterised by an unbalanced public and private gender system. In doing this, we also control whether living arrangements – specifically living alone – influence the determinants of life satisfaction of older men and women. The data used are from the cross-sectional surveys ‘Aspects of Daily Life’, undertaken in Italy by the National Statistical Institute. The results do not show clear gender differences in the determinants of life satisfaction, with only some slight gender differences among those living alone. This suggests that the social and cultural environment may play a relevant role for older people's life satisfaction.

In 2012, three architectural competitions were held as part of the strategic programme ‘Living Well, Growing Old’, launched by the Swedish government in 2010. The intention was to use the innovative quality of the architectural competition in order to conceive future-oriented built environments for the ageing Swedish society. In Sweden, several architectural competitions with a focus on space for dependent and frail older people have been organised over the past century. Architectural design has been incorporated into reforms for social care of older people. This study focuses on the relationship between architecture and socio-political visions in three architectural competitions, realised in 1907, 1948 and 1979. The study demonstrates that architectural competitions within this field are more than a list of functional and spatial requirements for architects to respect. Instead, they are socio-political statements that define spatial frameworks within an ideological view on how ethically to provide care for dependent and frail older people in a welfare regime.

Recent surveys in Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam reveal that substantial proportions of persons aged 60 and older co-reside with grandchildren and commonly provide grandparental care. Usually the grandchildren's parents are also present. Situations in which the grandchildren's parents are absent are considerably less frequent. Parents are commonly the main source of the grandchildren's financial support even if absent. Most grandparents that provide care do not consider it a serious burden even when the grandchild's parents are absent. Moreover, grandparental care is not always one-directional as grandchildren can also be of help to grandparents. These features of grandchild care reflect a regional cultural context that views acceptance of reciprocal intergenerational obligations as normal and in which co-residence of older persons and adult children is still common. Differences in economic development and past fertility trends account for much of the observed differences in grandparental care among the three countries by affecting grandchildren availability and migration of adult children. In addition, economic development and demographic trends will continue to shape grandparental care in the coming decades. Despite the lack of attention to development and demographic context in previous studies, these aspects of the changing societal context deserve a prominent place within conceptual frameworks guiding comparative research on grandparenting.

Since the World Health Organization introduced the concept of ‘age-friendly’ communities in 2006, there has been rapidly growing interest in making communities more age-friendly on the part of policy makers world-wide. There is a paucity of research to date, however, that has examined age-friendliness in diverse communities, particularly in rural communities. The main objective of the study reported in this paper was to examine whether age-friendliness varies across community characteristics, such as a population size. The study was based on surveys administered in 56 communities throughout Manitoba, a mid-Western Canadian province, in the context of a needs assessment process for communities that are part of the Age-Friendly Manitoba Initiative. A total of 1,373 individuals completed a survey developed to measure age-friendliness. Domains included the physical environment; housing options; the social environment; opportunities for participation; community supports and health-care services; transportation options; and communication and information. Community characteristics were derived from census data. Multi-level regression analysis indicated that the higher the percentage of residents aged 65 or older, the higher the ratings of age-friendliness overall and, specifically, ratings of the social environment, opportunities for participation, and communication and information. Moreover, small communities located within a census metropolitan area and remote communities in the far north of the province emerged as having the lowest age-friendliness ratings. These findings suggest that communities are generally responsive to the needs of their older residents. That different results were obtained for the various age-friendly domains underscores the importance of considering age-friendliness in a holistic way and measuring it in terms of a range of community features. Our study further highlights the importance of differentiating between degrees of rurality, as different patterns emerged for communities of different sizes and proximity to a larger urban centre.

Although mobility in and out of intimate relationships has become more common in later life, it has been a neglected issue in social gerontology. In this article, we ask what characterises the formation of new intimate relationships in later life, and whether there are any specific conditions that separate these from relationships in earlier stages of the lifecourse. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 28 persons aged 63–91 who have established a new intimate heterosexual relationship after the age of 60 or who are dating singles, we argue that time constitutes such a central structuring condition. We discuss and theorise two aspects of time – post-(re)productive free time and remaining time – which have an important formative power on new late-in-life relationships. We argue that together these aspects form a central existential structure of ageing in many Western societies – the paradoxical condition of having lots of available free time but little time left in life – which, besides influencing new late-in-life relationships, might also be relevant to other aspects of and choices in later life.

Although the proportion of older people using home care services has significantly increased in East Asian countries, the issue of the relationships between older people and home care workers in the East Asian context has received scant attention from scholars. This exploratory qualitative study aims to explore these relationships under the new Korean long-term care insurance system. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 22 family carers and private-sector home care service providers (home care workers and provider managers). The findings show that while the majority of family carers interviewed reported that their relationships were good, the majority of service providers' responses were more negative. Service providers stated that they experienced a number of difficulties that affected their relationships with older clients, including excessive demands or sexual harassment by the older people in their care, exposure to unsafe working environments, and poor treatment in terms of pay and conditions. The findings suggest that stable and good relationships between home care workers and their clients have not been secured in Korea's long-term care system.

Alice Munro's 2001 short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ and its 2006 film version, Away from Her, directed and adapted for the screen by Sarah Polley, are two interconnected narratives through which diverse (and even divergent) representations of romantic love and memory in later life can be analysed. Even if the two texts are constructed on an apparently simple plot line, which basically depicts the last phase of a 44-year-long marriage once the wife, Fiona, presents symptoms of dementia and is interned in a retirement home, they both allow for, at least, two contrasted interpretations. As will be demonstrated, these two possible readings unveil different cultural, social and psychological facets of memory in connection with late-life expressions of love; and each of them contributes, in their own way, to the construction of a dialogical narrative that mediates between the complexities of old age, dementia and gender difference, while at the same time demonstrating the power of literature and the cinema to reflect and refract the complexities of contemporary forms of ageing.

Research shows that contact with nature plays a vital role in our psychological wellbeing. Domestic gardening is common among older adults who spend more leisure hours gardening than any other age group. Despite this, few studies have systematically explored the significance of domestic gardens in relation to older adults' health and wellbeing. This study examined the perceived therapeutic benefits of gardening, and the effect of ageing in relation to older gardeners' continued participation in gardening, using quantitative and qualitative data from a survey of Australian older adult gardeners (N=331). The quantitative data, which included frequencies, were analysed using the PASW Statistics 18.0 package. The qualitative data, which included participants' responses to open questions, were analysed by deriving themes via Leximancer, an innovative text analytics software that uses word association information to elicit concepts, extracting the most important and grouping these according to themes. In relation to the reasons for gardening, several themes were identified including valuing the aesthetics of gardens, connecting with nature, achievement, and physical and mental activity. The benefits of gardening, and the variety of ways that respondents had adapted or modified their gardening activities in order to continue, are also reported. Gardening was more than a casual leisure pursuit for these participants, who saw it as critical to their physical and psychological wellbeing.

A dynamic latent structure model of the work–retirement transition process was identified, focusing on transitions of work and retirement status for men and women aged 51–74 years. Using the Health and Retirement Study data (1998–2004), latent transition analysis was used to identify a best fitting model capturing work–retirement statuses in four samples defined by age and sex. The prevalence of each status was described and the dynamic transition probabilities within the latent structure were examined. Using multinomial logistic regression, socio-demographic, health, family and occupational factors were assessed to determine how each was related to the likelihood of occupying a specific latent status at baseline. Results showed that study respondents were classified into distinct groups: full retiree, partial retiree or part-time worker, full-time worker, work-disabled or home-maker. The prevalence of full retiree status increased, while the prevalence for full-time worker status decreased over time for both men and women. Membership rates in the work-disabled and partial retiree status were generally consistent, with decreased probabilities of the work-disabled status in the older age groups and increased probabilities of partial retirees among younger men. Our findings indicated that many older Americans experience multiple transitions on the pathway to retirement. Future research on late-life labour-force transitions should evaluate the impact of the recent Great Recession and examine the role of larger socio-economic contexts.

The aim of the research presented is to determine the influence of socio-economic factors in childhood and mid-life on multiple tooth loss and chewing problems in mid- and late life in three Swedish birth cohorts (1903–1910, 1911–1920 and 1921–1925). Longitudinal national Swedish surveys were used for the analysis. Participants were interviewed in mid-life in 1968 and later in life (77–99 years of age) in 2002. Childhood socio-economic positions (SEP) did not result in different odds of multiple tooth loss and chewing problems in mid- and late life, but persons with higher mid-life SEP had lower odds. Persons born into the 1921–1925 birth cohort had significantly lower odds of multiple tooth loss in late life than the 1903–1910 birth cohort. Women had higher odds of losing multiple teeth than men in late life but not mid-life. Neither gender nor childhood and mid-life SEP predicted chewing problems late in life, but older people with multiple tooth loss had higher odds of chewing difficulty than those with mainly natural teeth. Childhood conditions may contribute to multiple tooth loss in mid-life, which subsequently contributes to multiple tooth loss in late life. Tooth loss in late life is strongly associated with difficulty chewing hard food. Prevalence of multiple tooth loss is higher in women than in men in late life but not in mid-life.

South Korea's old-age poverty rate is among the highest in the developed world. Confronted with the increasing demand for a social safety net for older people, the South Korean government introduced the Basic Old-Age Pension (BOAP) in 2008. The BOAP is a non-contributory, means-tested pension covering 70 per cent of the elderly population, with monthly benefits amounting to 84 kW (thousand Korean won, approximately equivalent to US $1) for singles and 139 kW for couples. Little empirical research has been conducted, however, to evaluate the effectiveness of the new pension programme in supporting the financial wellbeing of older people. Using data from the 2008–2010 Korea Welfare Panel Study, a panel data analysis is conducted to estimate the effects of the BOAP on three sets of financial wellbeing measures: financial difficulty, monthly consumption and overall financial satisfaction. The results suggest that the BOAP has beneficial effects on the financial wellbeing of older people by improving affordability of basic subsistence items such as heating and nutritious meals, particularly among the older-old group. However, the effects are limited to these few outcomes only; overall financial wellbeing and other important indicators remain unchanged.