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This study investigates the relation between leisure activities and the social status of the elderly based on a heterogeneous sample of the Dutch population. Close relationships are also analyzed to identify which people could serve as successful stimulators of leisure participation. The social profile confirms that older people have fewer social contacts and often feel lonely. This study shows that leisure activities explain a significant part of older people's social connectedness. Voluntary work, cultural activities, holiday, sports, reading books, hobbies and shopping are found to be successful predictors for social connectedness of older people. Watching TV, listening to the radio, and spending time behind the computer (passive activities) were not associated with social connectedness. Friends correlate positively to participation in leisure activities. Partners play a role in participation in cultural activities and sports; parents play a role in participation in voluntary work and holidays; siblings play a role in voluntary work and sports; and children play a role in cultural activities, reading books, and shopping. Local communities can use these close relationships and develop special programs to increase social connectedness and hence improve quality of life for older adults.

This study examined the measurement and invariance properties of the R-UCLA and de Jong Gierveld loneliness scales for research involving middle-aged and older adults. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of data from interviews with adults aged 45–84 revealed limited support for the unidimensionality of either scale while subsequent analyses indicated the multidimensionality of both. However, method effects associated with positive and negative item wording were also evident. Multiple group CFAs provided limited support for assumptions of measurement invariance across age groups and from baseline to follow-up with regard to the R-UCLA scale. In contrast, strong measurement invariance across age groups and successive measurements was established for the bidimensional dJG scale. Overall, the findings supported the relative utility of the dJG scale for research involving middle-aged and older adults but suggested a need for attention to the implications of method effects associated with item wording and lack of measurement invariance with respect to item residuals.

Given that the funding of pensions is at issue, governments across Europe now try to discourage early retirement. Yet, international research about the determinants of early retirement based on appropriate micro-data is scarce. In addition, studies have tended to look at the retiring generation in an isolated way, ignoring the intergenerational ties that may play a role in their retirement decision. This article uses the European Social Survey, covering 22 countries from all regions of Europe, to investigate to what extent becoming a grandparent affects early retirement in European countries. We apply multilevel event history modelling to data from the third round of the European Social Survey and from the MULTILINKS database on intergenerational policy indicators. We find that becoming a grandparent speeds up retirement, especially at the round ages of 55 and 60 years. However, the effect is statistically significant only for women, not for men. We discuss differences between countries, including the role played by differences in formal childcare provisions.

This article analyses social variability in retirement timing. It draws on a social stratification perspective, which arguably provides a richer theoretical framework than one-dimensional pull or push approaches. The first objective is to establish how class membership influences both the timing of retirement as well as the degree of accessibility to different pathways to retirement. The second objective is to elucidate the interplay of gender and class in work-exit dynamics. The empirical analysis uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate a series of event-history models for a sample of respondents from 11 Western European countries. The results show that social class exerts a strong influence on retirement processes, over and beyond other socio-economic characteristics, and especially on the risk of involuntary retirement. Employment constraints (push factors) and economic incentives (pull factors) affect workers in different class positions in markedly different ways. While there exist significant gender differences in retirement behaviour, these appear to be largely driven by women's lower class positions. The article concludes that ill health and unemployment remain heavy obstacles to prolonging working life in contemporary Western Europe.

We use hierarchical cross-classified random-effects models to simultaneously measure age, period, and cohort patterns of mortality risk between 1986 and 2006 for non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black men and women with less than a high school education, a high school education, and more than a high school education. We examine all-cause mortality risk and mortality risk from heart disease, lung cancer, and unpreventable cancers. Findings reveal that temporal reductions in black and white men's and women's mortality rates were driven entirely by cohort changes in mortality. Findings also demonstrate that disparate cohort effects between education groups widened the education gap in all-cause mortality risk and mortality risk from heart disease and lung cancer across this time period. Educational disparities in mortality risk from unpreventable cancers, however, did not change. This research uncovers widening educational differences in adult mortality and demonstrates that a cohort perspective provides valuable insights for understanding recent temporal changes in U.S. mortality risk.

This article examines how educational disparities in mortality emerge, grow, decline, and disappear across causes of death in the United States, and how these changes contribute to the enduring association between education and mortality over time. Focusing on adults age 40 to 64 years, we first examine the extent to which educational disparities in mortality persisted from 1989 to 2007. We then test the fundamental cause prediction that educational disparities in mortality persist, in part, by shifting to new health outcomes over time. We focus on the period from 1999 to 2007, when all causes of death were coded to the same classification system. Results indicate (1) substantial widening and narrowing of educational disparities in mortality across causes of death, (2) almost all causes of death with increasing mortality rates also had widening educational disparities, and (3) the total educational disparity in mortality would be about 25 percent smaller today if not for newly emergent and growing educational disparities since 1999. These results point to the theoretical and policy importance of identifying social forces that cause health disparities to widen over time.

This analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economie Panel and the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to assess the effect of ageing and health on the life satisfaction of the oldest old (defined as 75 and older). We observe a U-shaped relationship between age and levels of life satisfaction for individuals aged between 16 and 65. Thereafter, life satisfaction declines rapidly and the lowest absolute levels of life satisfaction are recorded for the oldest old. This decline is primarily attributable to low levels of perceived health. Once cohort effects are also controlled for, life satisfaction remains relatively constant across the lifespan.

Recent decades have seen increased interest in public attitudes towards public pension policies. Most previous research, however, relies heavily on dependent variables that fail to reflect the effective alternatives being discussed in most affluent democracies. This article seeks to improve our understanding of public attitudes towards pragmatic welfare policy options by examining cross-national differences in attitudes towards (i) cuts in old-age pension benefits, (ii) increases in social security contributions, and (iii) increases in the statutory retirement age. We test predictions of the dominant positive policy feedback theory and the alternative negative policy feedback theory. These approaches argue that policies induce consequences and attitudes that reinforce (positive feedback) or undermine (negative feedback) past policymaking trajectories. Empirical results obtained by multilevel analyses from a sample of 27 European countries are consistent mainly with the negative feedback approach. In countries with higher statutory retirement ages, citizens are more likely to support a postponement of retirement. However, in countries with higher elderly poverty, citizens are less likely to support cuts in pension benefits. In countries with higher social security contributions, citizens are less likely to support further increases in these contributions.

Using data from 11 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we explore associations between social position and retirement intentions in elder employees. Social position is defined in terms of three complementary measures of occupational position: occupational class, occupational status, and occupational skill level. Additionally, we study to what extent psychosocial stress at work, as measured by the demand–control and the effort–reward imbalance models, underlies the association between social position and retirement intention. For all three occupational classifications, findings show a social gradient of retirement intentions and of work stress. The lower the people's social positions, the more likely they are to report retirement intentions and to experience poor working conditions. Furthermore, results of multivariate analyses indicate that parts of the association between occupational position and retirement intentions can be explained by a poor psychosocial work environment. Our findings suggest that promoting working conditions may help to keep older workers in employment, in particular among workers in low occupational position.

Americans are living healthier and longer lives, but the shifting age distribution is straining existing and projected social welfare protections for older adults (e.g., Social Security, Medicare). One solution is to delay retirement. Another is an alternative to “total leisure” retirement—an “encore” stage of paid or unpaid engagement coming after career jobs but before infirmities associated with old age. We draw on gendered life course themes together with data from the American Time Use Survey (2003–2009) to examine the real time American men and women ages 50 to 75 apportion to paid work and unpaid volunteer work on an average day, as well as factors predicting their time allocations. We find that while full-time employment declines after the 50s, many Americans allot time to more limited engagements—working part time, being self-employed, volunteering, helping out—through and even beyond their 60s. Caring for a child or infirm adult reduces the odds of paid work but not volunteering. While time working for pay declines with age (though more slowly for men than women), time volunteering does not. Older men and women in poor health, without a college degree, with a disability or SSI income are the least likely to be publicly engaged. This social patterning illustrates that while the ideal of an encore of paid or unpaid voluntary, flexible, and meaningful engagement is an emerging reality for some, it appears less attainable for others. This suggests the importance of organizational and public policy innovations offering all Americans a range of encore opportunities.