scholarly journals Social Participation Across Midlife and Later Life: Evidence From the Silent Generation

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 408-408
Author(s):  
Eric Vogelsang

Abstract Despite the well-established benefits of social participation for individuals and communities, little is known about how it varies throughout the life course. Drawing upon data collected between 1957 and 2011 by the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (22,023 observations from a cohort of 6,627), this study provides four valuable results. One, I find evidence of five distinct social participation trajectories between the ages of 35 and 71; the majority of which demonstrate social disengagement over time. Two, these participation declines are primarily attributable to changes in meeting friends and group exercise activity. Three, the most pronounced activity differences separating those in more favorable and unfavorable participation trajectories are cultural event attendance and voluntary group membership. Lastly, I identify particular high school activities that are associated with social participation decades later. In total, these results highlight heterogeneity among different types of social activities, and underscore the possible consequences of membership decisions made in early adulthood.

2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142199239
Author(s):  
Eric M. Vogelsang

Despite the benefits of social participation for individuals and communities, little is known about how social participation varies over the life course. Drawing upon data collected between 1957 and 2011 by the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (22,023 observations from a cohort of 6,627), this study provides four valuable results. First, I find evidence of five distinct social participation trajectories; the majority of which demonstrate social disengagement as individuals age. Second, these decreases were primarily attributable to declines in meeting friends and group exercise. Third, the activities most likely to predict being a part of more-desirable trajectories were cultural event attendance, voluntary group membership, and joining charity groups. Last, I find that seven different types of high school activities were each associated with greater social activity counts, decades later. In total, these results highlight systematic differences in social participation trajectories and suggest that age-graded participation changes are highly dependent on the underlying social activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S128-S129
Author(s):  
Melanie S Hill ◽  
James E Hill ◽  
Stephanie Richardson ◽  
Jessica Brown ◽  
Jeremy B Yorgason ◽  
...  

Abstract Identity scholars have suggested that having a unified sense of past, present, and future is related to positive well-being outcomes (Whitbourne, Sneed & Skultety, 2009). One’s occupation can have a profound influence on an individual’s identity throughout the life course (Nazar & van der Heijden, 2012). Research has looked at career mobility among younger age groups (Baiyun, Ramkissoon, Greenwood, & Hoyte, 2018); however, less is known about the impact of career stability later in life. Consistency in career choice over the life course may have positive outcomes down the line as career becomes part of an individual's identity. The current study uses the Life and Family Legacies dataset, a longitudinal state-representative sample of 3,348, to examine individual’s careers at three points in the life course: high school (projected career choice), early adulthood, and later life. Results revealed that a match of desired career in high school and actual career in early adulthood was not predictive of life satisfaction or depressive symptoms in later life. However, a match of career in early adulthood and later life was significantly related to better life satisfaction and less depressive symptoms, which was explained through higher levels of job satisfaction. This study highlights the importance of acquiring and maintaining a career that is fulfilling to the individual over the course of early adulthood to later life.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara L. Comolli ◽  
Danilo Bolano ◽  
Laura Bernardi ◽  
Marieke Voorpostel

Critical events are occurrences that create turning points, disrupt individuals’ life courses and affect wellbeing. Here, we investigate how the co-occurrence of critical events and, in particular, the spacing in time of events across the life course influences life satisfaction in later life. We argue that life phases densely populated of critical events may translate into an acute resource drain affecting wellbeing in long term more strongly than if the same events were sparsely distributed. We use retrospective biographical information on critical events in family, work, health and residential trajectories in Switzerland to construct a life course Concentration Index of events based on the number, the time-lag between the occurrences and the number of life domains involved. Our results show that the higher is the concentration in time of critical events, the stronger will be their negative long-term effect on wellbeing, net of socio-demographic characteristics, of the total number of events ever experienced and of the time since the last event. Furthermore, such negative effect is even stronger if the person experienced periods dense of events during midlife and older adulthood than during youth or early adulthood.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 621-621
Author(s):  
Linda Waite

Abstract The social world is closely linked to other dimensions of health, including physical health and illness, physical functioning, cognition and emotional well-being, and these links may change across generations and may depend on social and policy context. The papers in this symposium focus on these links. Carr examines the associations between productive engagement in later life and perceptions of social support and interactions with friends and family. She finds that volunteer engagement is associated with greater perceived social support and interaction with friends and family but not with support from spouse. Waite, Duvoisin and Kotwal measure changes in social participation between the Silent Generation cohort, born between1938 and1947, and the Baby Boom cohort, born from1948-1958. They find find that the gender differences shown in the Silent Generation cohort are reduced among those born during the Baby Boom. Azar examines the moderating role of social policy, particularly defamilization, on the link between loneliness and health, using data from30 European countries and the U.S. Choi compares marital and partnership status, social support and strain in Silent Generation vs. Baby Boom cohorts. Her results suggest that those born during the Baby Boom are embedded in looser social relationships compared to their older counterparts. Together, these papers point to the importance of considering various dimensions of social life, gender, and context, including historical time and the life cycle, in understanding how the social world acts to affect well-being.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311983600
Author(s):  
Jessica Halliday Hardie ◽  
Jonathan Daw ◽  
S. Michael Gaddis

Existing research linking socioeconomic status with work focuses primarily on the precursors (educational attainment) and outcomes (income) of work, rather than asking how diverse facets of work influence health. Using four waves of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, the authors evaluate whether multiple measures of respondent job characteristics, respondent preferences for those characteristics, and their interaction substantially improve the fit of sociological models of men’s and women’s physical and mental health at midlife and old age compared with traditional models using educational attainment, parental socioeconomic status, and income. The authors find that nonwage job characteristics predict men’s and women’s physical and mental health over the life course, although there is little evidence that the degree to which one’s job accords with one’s job preferences matters for health. These findings expand what is known about how work matters for health, demonstrating how the manner and condition under which one works has lasting impacts on well-being.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 822-843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuben J. Thomas

How people meet new friends changes throughout life in ways that change the potential for diverse friendships. This study presents results from the first U.S. survey with data on how respondents met their friends, specifically the two nonfamily friends they most often socialize with. The most common sources of new friendships shift across life from the dominance of schooling during youth, to the centrality of work in midlife, to neighbors and voluntary groups in later life. Educational homophily peaks for friendships made in midlife, and is strongest for friendships made in higher education and at work. Racial homophily generally declines as people age but is lowest for men in midlife, while decreasing later for women. Friendship sources largely account for life course changes in racial homophily, but not educational homophily. The racial homophily induced by friendship sources also changes as people age, but in different ways for women and men.


2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-735
Author(s):  
A.W. Stadler ◽  
Z. Zawiślak ◽  
W. Stęplewski ◽  
A. Dziedzic

Abstract. Noise studies of planar thin-film Ni-P resistors made in/on Printed Circuit Boards, both covered with two different types of cladding or uncladded have been described. The resistors have been made of the resistive-conductive-material (Ohmega-Ply©) of 100 Ώ/sq. Noise of the selected pairs of samples has been measured in the DC resistance bridge with a transformer as the first stage in a signal path. 1/f noise caused by resistance fluctuations has been found to be the main noise component. Parameters describing noise properties of the resistors have been calculated and then compared with the parameters of other previously studied thin- and thick-film resistive materials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. e001038
Author(s):  
Diarmuid Coughlan ◽  
Pedro F Saint-Maurice ◽  
Susan A Carlson ◽  
Janet Fulton ◽  
Charles E Matthews

BackgroundThere is limited information about the association between long-term leisure time physical activity (LTPA) participation and healthcare costs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between LTPA over adulthood with later life healthcare costs in the USA.MethodsUsing Medicare claims data (between 1999 and 2008) linked to the National Institutes of Health-American Association of Retired Persons (NIH-AARP) Diet and Health Study, we examined associations between nine trajectories of physical activity participation throughout adulthood with Medicare costs.ResultsCompared with adults who were consistently inactive from adolescence into middle age, average annual healthcare costs were significantly lower for maintainers, adults who maintained moderate (–US$1350 (95% CI: –US$2009 to –US$690) or −15.9% (95% CI: −23.6% to −8.1%)) or high physical activity levels (–US$1200 (95% CI: –US$1777 to –US$622) or −14.1% (95% CI: −20.9% to −7.3%)) and increasers, adults who increased physical activity levels in early adulthood (–US$1874 (95% CI: US$2691 to –US$1057) or −22.0% (95% CI: −31.6% to −12.4%)) or in middle age (–US$824 (95% CI: –US$1580 to –US$69 or −9.7% (95% CI −18.6% to −0.8%)). For the four trajectories where physical activity decreased, the only significant difference was for adults who increased physical activity levels during early adulthood with a decline in middle age (–US$861 (95% CI:–US$1678 to –US$45) or −10.1% (95% CI: −19.7% to −0.5%)).ConclusionOur analyses suggest the healthcare cost burden in later life could be reduced through promotion efforts supporting physical activity participation throughout adulthood.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
C.C Topriceanu ◽  
J.C Moon ◽  
R Hardy ◽  
A.D Hughes ◽  
N Chaturvedi ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Cardiovascular diseases are an important component of the multi-morbidity syndrome which is associated with negative health outcomes resulting in a major societal economic burden. An objective way to assess multi-morbidity is to calculate a frailty index based on medical deficit accumulation. Late-life frailty has been validated to predict mortality, but little is known about the association between life-course frailty and cardiovascular health in later-life. Purpose To study the association between life-course frailty and later-life heart size and function using data from the world's longest running birth cohort with continuous follow-up. Methods A 45-deficit frailty index (FI) was calculated at 4 age-intervals across the life-course (0 to 16 years old, 19 to 44 years old, 45 to 54 years old and 60 to 64 years old) in participants from the UK 1946 Medical Research Council (MRC) National Survey of Heath and Development (NSHD) birth cohort. The life-course frailty indices (FI0_16, FI19_44, FI45_54 and FI60_64) reflect the cumulative medical deficits at the corresponding age-intervals. They were used to derive FImean and FIsum reflecting overall-life frailty. The step change in deficit accumulation between age-intervals was also calculated (FI2-1, FI3-1, FI4-1, FI3-2, FI4-2, FI4-3). Echocardiographic data at 60–64 years provided: E/e' ratio, ejection fraction (EF), myocardial contraction fraction index (MCFi) and left ventricular mass index (LVmassi). Generalized linear mixed models with gamma distribution and log link assessed the association between FIs and echo parameters after adjustment for sex, socio-economic position and body mass index. Results 1.805 NSHD participants were included (834 male). Accumulation of a single deficit had a significant impact (p<0.0001 to p<0.049) on LVmassi and MCFi in all the life-course FIs and overall FIs. LVmassi increased by 0.89% to 1.42% for the life-course FIs and by 0.36%/1.82% for FIsum and FImean respectively. MCFi decreased by 0.62% to 1.02% for the life-course FIs and by 0.33%/ 1.04%. for FIsum and FImean respectively. One accumulated deficit translated into higher multiplicative odds (13.2 for FI60-64, 2.1 for FI4-1, 75.4 for FI4-2 and 78.5 for FI4-3) of elevated filling pressure (defined as E/e' ratio >13, p<0.0.005 to p<0.02).A unit increase in frailty decreased LV EF (%) by 11%/12% for FI45-54 and FI60-64 respectively, by 10% to 12% for FI2-1, FI3-1, FI4-1 and FI4-2, and 4%/15% for FIsum and FImean respectively (p<0.0014 to p<0.044). Conclusion Frailty during the life-course, overall life-frailty and the step change in deficit accumulation is associated with later-life cardiac dysfunction. Frailty strain appears to have its greatest impact on pathological myocardial hypertrophy (high LVmassi and low MCFi) potentially paving the way to later-life systolic or diastolic dysfunction in susceptible individuals. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donato Lacedonia ◽  
Giulia Scioscia ◽  
Piera Soccio ◽  
Massimo Conese ◽  
Lucia Catucci ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a degenerative interstitial lung disease with both a poor prognosis and quality of life once the diagnosis is made. In the last decade many features of the disease have been investigated to better understand the pathological steps that lead to the onset of the disease and, moreover, different types of biomarkers have been tested to find valid diagnostic, prognostic and therapy response predictive ones. In the complexity of IPF, microRNA (miRNAs) biomarker investigation seems to be promising. Methods We analysed the expression of five exosomal miRNAs supposed to have a role in the pathogenesis of the disease from serum of a group of IPF patients (n = 61) and we compared it with the expression of the same miRNAs in a group of healthy controls (n = 15). Results In the current study what emerged is let-7d down-regulation and, unexpectedly, miR-16 significant down-regulation. Moreover, through a cross-sectional analysis, a clustering of the expression of miR-16, miR-21 and miR-26a was found. Conclusions These findings could help the individuation of previously unknown key players in the pathophysiology of IPF and, most interestingly, more specific targets for the development of effective medications.


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