Social Participation Through the Retirement Transition: Differences by Gender and Employment Status.

This study examines how retirees' formal and informal social participation change over time and investigates gendered differences. Seven waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing track the frequency of social participation. A comparison group of employed individuals, weighted with coarsened exact matching, controls for age and time trends, and mixed model regressions estimate changes over time. Retirees show a gradual decline in the frequency of meeting friends and an abrupt decrease in the frequency of attending a social gathering, compared to their working peers. These trends are much stronger for men than women, and compound pre-existing gender differences in social participation. The more severe decline in the social participation of men is of great concern and points to the persistence of gendered employment structures into the retirement transition, putting Korean retirees at risk of social isolation and related health deterioration.

Social Participation in Widowhood: Evidence From a 12-Year Panel.

OBJECTIVES: Social participation is important to the quality of life of older adults, especially widows. This is the first study to test whether older widows' formal and informal social participation rises or declines using multiple panel observations pre- and postbereavement. This article also tests the moderating effects of economic and marital satisfaction, depression, and husband's illness before death on these trends. METHODS: Seven waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing are used to track changes in 4 measures of social participation-meeting and contacting a child, meeting friends, and attending a formal group. A comparison group of married individuals, weighted with coarsened exact matching, controls for age and time trends. Mixed model regressions estimate the effects of widowhood over time. RESULTS: Social participation shows little change before bereavement and rises significantly after bereavement for all measures. However, frequencies of meeting and contacting a child peak and decline early postbereavement, while meeting friends and attending a group show delayed but long-lasting effects. With regard to moderators, economic and marital satisfaction are positively associated with overall social participation levels but negatively associated with social participation postbereavement. DISCUSSION: Increased social participation after bereavement underscores the resilience of widows and the social support they receive. However, differences in timing suggest that contact with children is gradually substituted with extrafamilial relationships in the long run. The negative moderating roles of economic and marital satisfaction point to a paradox where seemingly well-off individuals may be more vulnerable to widowhood.

Ageism Linked to Culture, Not Demographics: Evidence From an 8-Billion-Word Corpus Across 20 Countries.

OBJECTIVES: Ageism has increased over 200 years and costs the U.S. health care system $63 billion a year. While scholars agree on the consequences of ageism, there are disagreements on whether it is related to the demographics of aging, or society's cultural values. We test both hypotheses across 20 countries. METHOD: To circumvent the sampling limitations of survey studies, we used an 8-billion-word corpus, identified 3 synonyms with the highest prevalence-aged, elderly, old people-and compiled the top 300 words (collocates) that were used most frequently with these synonyms for each of the 20 countries. The resulting 6,000 collocates were rated on an ageism scale by 2 raters to create an ageism score per country. Cultural dimension scores-Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-term Orientation-were taken from Hofstede, and demographics-size and speed of population aging-came from the World Development Indicators. RESULTS: Of the 20 countries, UK topped the ageism table, while Sri Lanka had the lowest ageism score. Multiple regression models showed that higher levels of masculinity and long-term orientation are associated with ageism, controlling for other cultural dimensions, demographics (size and speed of aging), and economics (GDP-per-capita). DISCUSSION: Our findings blunt the deterministic nature of ageism at the societal level. Demographics is only one side of the ageism coin, and the cultural side is equally, if not more important. This study lays the groundwork to tackle societal ageism-one of our generation's most pernicious threats.