No other reference provides such a comprehensive and timely overview of theory and research on family relationships, the contexts of family life, and major turning points in late-life families. It includes many suggestions for theoretical and practical applications for future research on a score of important topics. This multidisciplinary survey is an invaluable library reference and teaching resource intended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, and practitioners -- for gerontologists, family scholars, psychologists, sociologists, historians, social workers, health-care providers, and policy makers.

Childhood disabilities, particularly cognitive disabilities, are on the rise yet social programs and services to help US families respond to disabilities are not. Many families turn to grandparents for assistance juggling work, family responsibilities, and specialized therapies. This book is based on in-depth interviews with grandparents who are providing at least some care to grandchildren with disabilities. The analyses will help to better understand (1) under what conditions grandparents provide care and support, (2) what types and intensities of care and support grandparents provide, and (3) the impact of that care and support on grandparents' social, emotional, physical, and financial wellbeing. In this fascinating and provocative book, Madonna Harrington Meyer and Ynesse Abdul-Malak take readers on a deep dive into the complex lives of grandparents who care for their disabled grandchildren. In Grandparenting Children with Disabilities, their interviews reveal the joy, meaning, and purpose grandparents find in caregiving, the challenges and frustrations they encounter, and the many ways they compromise their own health and well-being for the sake of their grandchildren. Drawing from theories of cumulative inequality and from their deep knowledge of the US policy context, the authors lay bare the systemic failures that leave families of children with disabilities without adequate support and that place the most vulnerable among them at grave physical, emotional, and financial risk... Jane McLeod, Provost Professor, Indiana University Grandparents in the U.S. already take on far more parenting responsibilities as compared to their peers in other countries. Grandparenting Children with Disabilities demonstrates that the intensity of these responsibilities is compounded for those whose grandchildren have disabilities given limited policy supports and a society still largely unaccommodating to those with disabilities. This book beautifully navigates the tension between the love these grandparents have for their grandchildren and the challenges they face caring for them. Pamela Herd, Professor, Georgetown University Grandparenting Children with Disabilities offers important insights about the lived experience of older adults who care for and care about their grandchildren...The authors skillfully integrate the stories they tell with consideration of macro social structural influences and life course perspectives... I recommend it highly! Eva Kahana, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve

This second edition of the popular Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging provides up-to-date coverage of the most fundamental topics in this discipline. Like the first edition, this volume accessibly and comprehensively reviews the neural mechanisms of cognitive aging appropriate to both professionals and students in a variety of domains, including psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurology, and psychiatry. The chapters are organized into three sections. The first section focuses on major questions regarding methodological approaches and experimental design. It includes chapters on structural imaging (MRI, DTI), functional imaging (fMRI), and molecular imaging (dopamine PET, etc), and covers multimodal imaging, longitudinal studies, and the interpretation of imaging findings. The second section concentrates on specific cognitive abilities, including attention and inhibitory control, executive functions, memory, and emotion. The third section turns to domains with health and clinical implications, such as the emergence of cognitive deficits in middle age, the role of genetics, the effects of modulatory variables (hypertension, exercise, cognitive engagement), and the distinction between healthy aging and the effects of dementia and depression. Taken together, the chapters in this volume, written by many of the most eminent scientists as well as young stars in this discipline, provide a unified and comprehensive overview of cognitive neuroscience of aging.

Southeast and East Asian countries are undergoing varying stages of population ageing. The social, economic and political implications of population ageing will be enormous, and because of the fast speed of ageing in the region, the countries cannot afford the luxury of time for the gradual evolution of social and structural support systems and networks for the older population. The essays in this volume critically examine national ageing policies and programmes, the sustainability of existing pension systems, housing and living arrangements, inter-generational transfer, and aspects of quality of life of the elderly population. While the findings show that most Southeast Asian countries have started to formulate and implement national ageing policies, they also indicate that the existing policies are by and large inadequate and underdeveloped in serving the needs of the older population and indeed much more must be done to prepare for the future.

Operators of assisted living facilities interpret aging in place very differently than residents do. This difference in interpretation must be taken into account by regulators, policymakers, and operators so that they may reconsider assisted living's place along the traditional continuum of care.

With the growing number of assisted living facilities opening across the United States, it is essential for scholars and practitioners to understand residents' experiences in these environments. The author examines the ideals versus the realities of assisted living and the aging in place/continuum of care debate surrounding assisted living.

While the author presents the results of a detailed, comprehensive anthropological study, she also addresses policy issues which are of concern on the national level. The book combines academic and applied approaches to create an ethnographic fieldwork investigation relevant to housing and health care policies for the elderly in the United States.

This book examines the process of population aging in China and its unique features, considers the social progress implied in China becoming a society with an aging population, and assesses the tremendous risks and challenges involved. Based on the development of pension security systems around the world, the book studies the status quo and future requirements of the Chinese pension security system from the perspectives of capital, service and spirit, and puts forwards a three-pillar pension security system that is in conformity with China's current situation - and reflects the developmental trend that, in future, social security will likely transform from material security into comprehensive security. In addition, the book analyzes the Chinese pension security system. While integrating international perspectives, its main focus is on statistical analysis, combining theory with practice, and qualitative with quantitative analysis. As such, the book not only offers a "wi ndow" for the world on the status and evolution of China's pension security system, but also an opportunity for international academic dialogues.

The Last Choice establishes that preemptive suicide in advanced age can be rational: that it can make good sense to evade age-related personal diminishment even at the cost of good time left. Criteria are provided to help determine whether soundly reasoned, cogently motivated,and prudently timed self-destruction can be in one's interests late in life. In our time suicide and assisted suicide are being increasingly tolerated as ways to escape unendurable mental or physical suffering, but it isn't widely accepted that suicide may be a rational choice before the onset of such suffering. This book's basic claim is that it can be rational to choose to die sooner as oneself than to survive as a lessened other: that judicious appropriation of one's own inevitable death can be an identity-affirming act and a fitting end to life. Discussion of preemptive suicide goes beyond contributing to current widespread debate about assisted suicide. It is a matter tightly interrelated with other right to die questions and one bound to become a national issue. If there are good arguments for escaping intolerable situations caused by age-related deteriorative conditions, most of those arguments will equally support avoidance of those conditions. If assisted suicide becomes more generally acknowledged and accepted, preemptive suicide will almost certainly follow. It is crucial, then, to examine whether preemptive suicide constitutes a rational option for reflective aging individuals.

This open access book offers new insights into the ageing-migration nexus and the nature of home. Documenting the hidden world of France's migrant worker hostels, it explores why older North and West African men continue to live past retirement age in this sub-standard housing. Conventional wisdom holds that at retirement labour migrants ought to instead return to their families in home countries, where their French pensions would have far greater purchasing power. This paradox is the point of departure for a book which transports readers from the banlieues of Paris to the banks of the Senegal River and the villages of the Anti-Atlas. In intimate ethnographic detail, the author brings to life the experiences of these older labour migrants by sharing in the life of the hostels as a resident, by observing at close quarters the men's family life on the other side of the Mediterranean as a guest in their homes, and even by accompanying them in their travels by bus, sea, and air. The monograph evaluates several theories of migration against rich qualitative data gathered from multiple methods: biographical narrative and semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research. In the process, it offers a thoughtful contribution to broader debates on what it means for migrants to belong and achieve inclusion in society. This book has been awarded an 'honourable mention' in the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, courtesy of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University. For more information please see: https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/awards/scholarly/2018.php. This book has been nominated for the 2019 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize

The Rolling Stones (now in their 60s) have sung to us for years about "what a drag it is getting old," but it doesn't have to be that way. Despite living in a youth-oriented society, many of the aged patients seen by Dr. Levine have kept their emotional zest, intellectual zeal, and empowering dignity. Levine points out well-known public figures who are clearly aging with dignity and vitality. The neurologist author shows steps we can take to age while retaining these qualities, defying a society that challenges this quest. Living longer is not enough for most of us: we don't want to just survive. The quality of our life as we age is most important, and much of that depends on our attitudes and approach. The text includes strategies to optimize self-esteem as well as health, including attention to nurtrition, exercise, health care, education and mind stimulation, sexuality, social activities, and cosmetics and cosmetic surgery. Readers are shown the physiological facts of aging, from cellular to systemic changes. The most common diseases in old age are described, and actions are suggested to avoid many of the diseases. Levine also explores how the disorders change abilities and self-perception.

With the aspiration for a long life now achievable for many individuals, the status of old age as a distinct social position has become problematic. In this radical re-examination of the nature of old age, Paul Higgs and Chris Gilleard reveal the emergence of a 'fourth age' that embodies the most feared and marginalised aspects of old age, conceptually linked to and yet distinct from traditional models of old age. Inspired by the authors' ground-breaking work on the third and fourth age and supported by extensive sociological, medical and historical research, Rethinking Old Age offers a unique and timely analysis of the fourth age as a 'social imaginary' that is shaped and maintained by the social, cultural and political discourses and practices that divide later life. It stands as a significant resource for students, academics and practitioners of sociology, ageing studies, gerontology, social policy, health studies, social work and nursing.

Using the profiles of women living in a retirement community, the author explores the information and social worlds of aging women. The focus of the study is the effects of aging on help-seeking behaviors. The author examines ways in which older women search for information; she found several areas of need, including failing health, financial concerns, and loneliness. For many of the women, death was not a problematic area. The author also discovered that the most critical areas of need were not shared with others. In fact, the residents chose to conceal the most dire needs for assistance. Surprisingly, the retirement community played a major role in this process. The relationships between help-seeking behaviors and information policy is extensively discussed. The role that information professionals can play in bringing information to populations such as the one examined here adds insight to the studies of information use and user needs.

The subject of midlife has been dominated by the woes of aging--menopause, divorce, hormone replacement therapies, aging parents, and fleeing children. Now a broad-ranging new work by clinical psychologist Linda N. Edelstein, Ph.D., "The Art of Midlife," describes the freedom and authenticity that can be made a cornerstone of the middle years. She describes three healthy and predictable phases. First, women relinquish old ways, untying themselves from the past and mourning the losses of youth and its illusions. By placing less emphasis on the needs of others, women can live more creatively and enjoy the present. The women Dr. Edelstein studied have been able to move to the next step, in which they reconnect to themselves. They regain their authentic voices, simplify life, and allow long buried aspects of themselves to emerge. Finally, women refocus their futures. With courage, they embrace new people, ideas, activities, and work--and pursue adult dreams regardless of external rewards.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country's history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.

How can we be happier, healthier and more satisfied in life? This edited collection examines various dimensions of wellbeing among older people, including its measurement; social, environmental and economic determinants; and how research can be translated into policy to improve quality of life for older people. With an increasingly ageing population across countries and an increasing population of older adults, there is growing interest in improving older people's ability to live healthily and happily. With a focus on retirement and aged care, this book is important reading for those interested in Welfare Economics, Health Economics and Development.

This book examines one of the most important demographic changes facing the United States: an overall aging population and the increasing influence of Latinos. It also looks at the changing demographics in Mexico and its impact on the health and financial well-being of aging Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The book provides a conceptual and accessible framework that will educate and inform readers about the interconnectedness of the demographic trends facing these two countries. It also explores the ultimate personal, social, and political impact they will have on all Americans, in the U.S. as well as Mexico. Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas features papers presented at the 2013 International Conference on Aging in the Americas, held at the University of Texas at Austin, September 2013. It brings together the work of many leading scholars from the fields of sociology, demography, psychology, anthropology, geography, social work, geriatric medicine, epidemiology, and public affairs. Coverage in this edited collection includes working with diverse populations; culturally compatible interventions for diverse elderly; the health, mental health, and social needs and concerns of aging Latinos; and the policy, political, and bi-lateral implications of aging and diversity in the U.S. and Mexico. The book provides a rich blend of empirical evidence with insightful, cutting-edge analysis that will serve as an insightful resource for researchers and policy makers, professors and graduate students in a wide range of fields, from sociology and demography to economics and political science.

This book highlights international efforts to better understand the role of individual differences in healthy aging by exploring new directions, methods, and questions within the field. The book considers how to measure personality and personality change during adulthood, the associations between personality and healthy aging outcomes over time, and the role of personality in building interventions to promote healthy aging. The first section considers the value of personality constructs for healthy aging outcomes beyond the broad Big Five personality dimensions. It discusses the role of attachment, purpose, and affect, and also touches on the issue of psychopathology. The second section presents innovative assessment methods, research designs beyond classical longitudinal approaches, as well as sophisticated and integrative techniques for analyzing personality change processes. The third section raises new important questions, such as how interventionists from non-personality domains can incorporate personality processes in their intervention programs. It also discusses how different domains of individual functioning may interact in concert to predict healthy aging outcomes, as well as how more integrative lifespan models of healthy aging may advance research on personality and healthy aging. Overall, this book will spark interest and chart new directions for researchers, practitioners and interventionists in healthy aging, gerontology and applied fields.

As the Baby Boom generation approaches traditional retirement age, the aging of the global labor force will continue to lead to an increase in the number of people who will transition into retirement in the next decade. Retirement researchers have made several important advances in their field in recent years that represent a shift from examining retirement through an economic to a psychological perspective. Retirement is not simply a one-time decision-making event; rather, it represents a process through which workers decrease their psychological commitment to work and behaviorally withdraw from the workforce. Approaching retirement from this perspective, The Oxford Handbook of Retirement offers comprehensive, up-to-date, and forward-thinking summaries of contemporary knowledge on retirement. The approach is interdisciplinary, spanning human resource management, organizational psychology, development psychology, gerontology, sociology, public health, and economics. The chapters assembled in this volume are organized into five parts, providing comprehensive coverage conceptualizations of retirement from multiple disciplines; existing theoretical perspectives and research findings on retirement, including adult development, career development, organizational and management, and economic perspectives; current and future challenges in retirement research and practice; and recommendations and suggestions for prospective areas of research. Assembling expertly authored chapters from leaders in the field, this volume provides a comprehensive summary on the knowledge domain of retirement useful for students, academics, and retirement researchers.

Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, Eighth Edition, tackles the biological and environmental influences on behavior as well as the reciprocal interface between changes in the brain and behavior during the course of the adult life span. The psychology of aging is important to many features of daily life, from workplace and the family, to public policy matters. It is complex, and new questions are continually raised about how behavior changes with age. Providing perspectives on the behavioral science of aging for diverse disciplines, the handbook explains how the role of behavior is organized and how it changes over time. Along with parallel advances in research methodology, it explicates in great detail patterns and sub-patterns of behavior over the lifespan, and how they are affected by biological, health, and social interactions. New topics to the eighth edition include preclinical neuropathology, audition and language comprehension in adult aging, cognitive interventions and neural processes, social interrelations, age differences in the connection of mood and cognition, cross-cultural issues, financial decision-making and capacity, technology, gaming, social networking, and more.

Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, Eighth Edition, presents the extraordinary growth of research on aging individuals, populations, and the dynamic culmination of the life course, providing a comprehensive synthesis and review of the latest research findings in the social sciences of aging. As the complexities of population dynamics, cohort succession, and policy changes modify the world and its inhabitants in ways that must be vigilantly monitored so that aging research remains relevant and accurate, this completely revised edition not only includes the foundational, classic themes of aging research, but also a rich array of emerging topics and perspectives that advance the field in exciting ways. New topics include families, immigration, social factors, and cognition, caregiving, neighborhoods, and built environments, natural disasters, religion and health, and sexual behavior, amongst others.

With the collective knowledge of expert contributors in the field, The International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy explores the challenges arising from the ageing of populations across the globe.With an expansive look at the topic, this comprehensive Handbook examines various national state approaches to welfare provisions for older people and highlights alternatives based around the voluntary and third-party sector, families and private initiatives. Each of these issues are broken down further and split into six comprehensive sections: - Context - Pensions - Health - Welfare - Case Studies - Policy Innovation and Civil Society Academics interested in policy challenges for mature societies will find this Handbook a highly relevant reference tool. It also offers an important message for policy makers and practitioners in the field of public policy. Contributors include: J. Atanackovic, D.E. Bloom, I. Bode, A. Boersch-Supan, I.L. Bourgeault, R. Canning, B.A. Carnes, L. Carter-Edwards, T. Chen, E. Collom, R. Edlin, A. Elissen, M. Eloundou-Enyegue, M. Erlinghagen, J. Field, V. Galasso, R. Gauld, K. Hank, S. Harper, J. Hoffman, R. Holzmann, K. Howse, J.H. Johnson Jr., M. Kaplan, M. Kautto, H.G. Koenig, D. Lain, R. Lee, G.W. Leeson, E. Le , Z. Li, P. Lloyd-Sherlock, B.L. Lowell, A. Lusardi, A. Mason, R. McKinnon, A.M. Parnell, P. Profeta, N. Redondo, M. Sanchez, C. Saraceno, K. Spencer-Suarez, M.Tenikue, V. Timonen, F.M. Torres-Gil, S. Vickerstaff, B. Vriehoef, J. Warburton, A. Webb, E. Westerhout

Human aging is perhaps the most complex and important subject that will be facing science and societies in the next century. People seem to be living longer and remaining more active than their parents and grandparents, caused by to social and demographic shifts that must be accommodated by society. On the other hand it presents perplexing questions about the underlying processes and determinants of healthy aging. This book gives a design for research that will increase our understanding of the factors that influence healthy aging and can lead to improvements in reducing the levels of disability in the population. Its focus is on bio-behavioural and psychological factors contributing to healthy aging. Since human aging is determined by many interacting conditions inside and outside of the organism, research should concentrate on ecological relationships between the human organism and its social and physical environment. Not only individual characteristics associated with aging are discussed in this book, but also their impacts on society. The information presented in 'Aging in Europe' has not been available in any single source before. In many ways this book provides a model of gaining knowledge through cooperation that should guide us in the next century and beyond.

This book integrates the economics of aging and insight based on political economy and explores generational conflict in the context of governmental spending. This problem is general, as the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted: lockdowns protect the elderly, but hurt the young. Policies to address global warming impose taxes on the elderly, but would bring benefits largely in the future. This book addresses intergenerational problems by placing its focus on budget allocation, taxation, and regulation. By using Japanese and US data, the authors conduct statistical analysis of whether regions with aging populations may adopt policies that generate benefits during a short period of time instead of policies that could benefit current young generations for an extended period of time. If the policy preferences of voters depend on their age, and if policy adoption by a government reflects public opinion, the change in demographic composition in a region may affect governmental policies. In an aged society, the elderly are pivotal voters. Budgets may be reallocated from policies favored by younger generations, such as education, to policies the elderly prefer, such as welfare programs. This generates an intergenerational externality problem: voters with short life expectancy do not take into consideration long-term benefits. Moreover, the current tax bases may be replaced by other tax bases that do not harm the elderly. The results reported in the book largely support these hypotheses. Evidence also shows that the gender and racial composition and institutional factors, including the extent of fiscal decentralization, are important in anticipating effects of population aging in other countries.