RCR Report of “A Language for Agent-Based Discrete-Event Modeling and Simulation of Linked Lives”

The artifact evaluated in this report is relevant to the article. In fact, it allows us to run the experiments and reproduce figures, and the dependencies are documented. The process to regenerate data presented in the article completes correctly, and the results are reproducible. Additionally, the authors have uploaded their artifact on permanent repositories, which ensures a long-term retention. This article can thus receive the Artifacts Available , Artifacts Evaluated–Reusable , and Results Reproduced badges.

A Language for Agent-based Discrete-event Modeling and Simulation of Linked Lives

In agent-based modeling and simulation, discrete-time methods prevail. While there is a need to cover the agents’ dynamics in continuous time, commonly used agent-based modeling frameworks offer little support for discrete-event simulation. Here, we present a formal syntax and semantics of the language ML3 (Modeling Language for Linked Lives) for modeling and simulating multi-agent systems as discrete-event systems. The language focuses on applications in demography, such as migration processes, and considers this discipline’s specific requirements. These include the importance of life courses being linked and the age-dependency of activities and events. The developed abstract syntax of the language combines the metaphor of agents with guarded commands. Its semantics is defined in terms of Generalized Semi-Markov Processes. The concrete language has been realized as an external domain-specific language. We discuss implications for efficient simulation algorithms and elucidate benefits of formally defining domain-specific languages for modeling and simulation.

Linked Lives: Does Disability and Marital Quality Influence Risk of Marital Dissolution among Older Couples?

Using fourteen waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal panel survey with respondents in the United States, this research explores whether marital quality—as measured by reports of enjoyment of time together—influences risk of divorce or separation when either spouse acquires basic care disability. Discrete-time event history models with multiple competing events were estimated using multinomial logistic regression. Respondents were followed until they experienced the focal event (i.e., divorce or separation) or right-hand censoring (i.e., a competing event or were still married at the end of observation). Disability among wives was predictive of divorce/separation in the main effects model. Low levels of marital quality (i.e., enjoy time together) were associated with marital dissolution. An interaction between marital quality and disability yielded a significant association among couples where at least one spouse acquired basic care disability. For couples who acquired disability, those who reported low enjoyment were more likely to divorce/separate than those with high enjoyment; however, the group with the highest predicted probability were couples with low enjoyment, but no acquired disability.

The Implications of Aging Couples’ Linked Lives: Dyadic Associations in Health and Well-Being

Older adults age in the context of their intimate partnerships. Partners’ lives—their emotions, behaviors, and health—are intricately linked as they navigate the challenges associated with aging. This symposium presents research that illuminates ways partners influence one another later in life. The talks are diverse with regard to their timescale (e.g., years vs. hours) and context (e.g., dementia vs. pain). Dr. Martire will examine associations between declines in one spouse’s physical health over 5 years and the other’s mental health. This talk will further consider whether discussing health concerns exclusively with one’s spouse intensifies such associations. Ms. Nah will show how the pain of both partners (care providers and recipients) contributes to escalating marital conflict over 2 years. Dr. Wilson will demonstrate that emotional reactivity to spousal distress in the lab is associated with increased proinflammatory gene expression up to 80 minutes later, a risky pattern for health if repeated over time. Dr. Monin will examine actor and partner associations of affect and depressive symptoms among people with early-stage dementia and their spouses; the absence of partner associations suggests that emotional spillover may operate differently in early-stage dementia dyads. Dr. Novak will identify correlates of four latent profiles derived from couples’ physical, psychological, and relationship well-being: happy, healthy couples; unhappy, unhealthy couples; and two groups with blissful marriages despite individual problems. Dr. Amy Rauer, an internationally recognized scholar of relationships and health, will discuss ways in which this research advances our understanding of couples’ linked lives.

Racism and the Life Course: Social and Health Equity for Older Black Americans

Racism and the Life Course: Social and Health Equity for Older Black Americans examines the impacts of systemic racism on adult development and the aging trajectories of Black Americans. Using the life course perspective (e.g., socio-historical events, linked lives), we discuss systemic racism as a structural driver of practices and policies (e.g., racial residential segregation) that have shaped the social and health circumstances of older Black Americans. These life circumstances include high rates of poverty, poor housing and neighborhood conditions, worse health profiles, and relationship loss and social isolation—conditions that, for too many older Black adults, represent the ‘normal’ state of affairs. Creating a ‘new normal’ of social and health equity for older Black Americans requires recognizing and disrupting the operation of systemic racism in our policies and practices. Selected recommendations and actions for achieving health and social equity for older Black Americans are discussed.

Book Review: Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration and Kinship in Sri Lanka

n/a

Small Stories of Home Moves: A Gendered and Generational Breadth-and-Depth Investigation

This article explores the way people from different age cohorts and genders talk about home moves to contribute a rounded and nuanced relational understanding. We draw on a secondary analysis of qualitative longitudinal data from multiple archived studies, using a breadth-and-depth analytic approach. Conceptually, we apply a linked lives perspective that understands home moves as tied to sets of social relationships and involving the navigation of structural circumstances. We identify complex discrete and serial small stories where moving away from or returning to is interdependently linked to others staying put, and staying put to others’ home moves, at local, intra-national, and trans-national levels. Home moves are shaped structurally by gender and age cohort generation. Home and moving tend to be more salient in women’s accounts, articulating with familial generation as their own and others’ comings and goings accumulated over their lifetime. Structural issues are also evident in the material and social resources that enable and constrain home moves, with more micro-level identification of recurrent themes of anxieties in the accounts of men who are starting/have young families, in contrast to women’s anxieties concerning the relational implications of home moves.

Intergenerational care in corona times: Practices of care in Swedish families during the pandemic

Objective: This paper analyses intergenerational relationships in Sweden during the corona pandemic, with a special focus on practices of care. The research question is: How is care between generations – between grandparents, adult children and grandchildren – done during pandemic conditions? Background: In Sweden, where an extensive welfare state provides affordable child- and eldercare, the corona strategy of generational separation has still affected family practices of care between generations. In this article we analyse narratives of intergenerational care, taking our point of departure in theories of personal life (Smart 2007), relationality (Mason 2004), and care as sentient activity (Mason 1996). Method: The paper draws on a qualitative interview study with grandparents (n=30), adult children (n=12) and grandchildren (n=12), with data collection taking place shortly before and during the coronavirus pandemic. Results: The study detects the reciprocal and complex ways in which care between generations takes place. When people relate their experiences, strategies for new ways of doing care are at the centre, involving creative ways of negotiating distance and risk, all marked by both worry and relief. Conclusion: The pandemic condition becomes a "filter" affecting and leading to a reformulation of practices of care, from taken-for-granted co-presence narratives, into narratives of relational participation resulting in an overall heightened awareness of the importance and difficulties of intergenerational care practices. The study concludes that a strong welfare state does not translate into complete autonomy or independence; rather, people continue to live "linked lives".

How Do Caregiving Responsibilities Affect Women’s Work–Family Spillovers Over the Life Course?

Using three waves of data from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS 1995–2014, N =1,123), this study investigates the linkage between caregiving and women’s positive and negative work–family spillovers over the life course. Results show that women’s work–family experiences are not only shaped by caregiving itself but also depend on the timing when they take these roles: the effect of raising school-aged children on negative family-to-work spillover (FWS) is the highest in the 40s, and the effect of raising adolescent children on positive work-to-family spillover (WFS) is the lowest in the 50s. Providing financial support to parents increases both negative FWS and negative WFS, and the effects are highest in their 20s and 65+, respectively. Providing emotional care and unpaid assistance to parents can enhance women’s positive FWS in their 40s. This study’s findings suggest that timing and linked-lives both play strong roles in shaping women’s work–family experiences.