Distribution of gender and labour force participation and filial support types in Europe and Israel

The present study aimed to investigate the temporal changes in the support provided by adult children to their ageing parents, including paperwork help, household help, and personal care, and its intensity, ranging from no support to very intense support. We used latent Markov models to assess filial support transitions. Analysing data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) covering 13 European countries and Israel between 2004 and 2022, we identified two types of filial support: stable and fluctuating. Our findings indicate that Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Denmark, and the Czech Republic have a higher probability of maintaining stable filial support levels over the years. In contrast, Greece, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Israel, Sweden, and Poland exhibit fluctuating filial support. Additionally, Western and Northern countries, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany, tend to reach only moderate or intense support levels. In comparison, Southern and Eastern countries, like Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Poland, provide support that can reach very intense levels.

The aim of this study is to examine the association of welfare state policies and the gendered organisation of intergenerational support (instrumental help and personal care) to older parents. The study distinguishes between support to older parents provided at least weekly, i.e. time-intensive and often burdening support, and supplemental sporadic support. Three policy instruments were expected to be associated with daughters' and sons' support or gender inequality in intergenerational support respectively: (1) professional social services, (2) cash-for-care payments and (3) legal obligations to provide or co-finance care for parents. The analyses based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe showed that daughters provided somewhat more sporadic and much more intensive support than sons throughout Europe. While about half of all children who sporadically supported a parent were men, this applied to only one out of four children who provided intensive support. Logistic multilevel models revealed that legal obligations were positively associated with daughters' likelihood of giving intensive support to parents but did not affect the likelihood of sons doing so. Legal obligations thus stimulate support in a gender-specific way. Both legal obligations and cash-for-care schemes were also accompanied by a more unequal distribution of involvement in intensive support at the expense of women. Social services, in contrast, were linked to a lower involvement of daughters in intensive support. In sum, the results suggest that welfare states can both preserve or reduce gender inequality in intergenerational support depending on specific arrangements.

The articles in this special issue of the European Journal of Ageing are based upon papers that were first presented in a symposium held within the framework of the 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in November, 2010, in New Orleans. The GSA’s annual meeting is one of the leading global venues for the presentation of cutting-edge gerontological research. The theme for the 2010 annual meeting—Transitions of Care: Across the Ageing Continuum—provided a singularly appropriate opportunity to organize the first GSA symposium to be based upon research papers drawn from the database of SHARE—The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. This was because the SHARE database includes a rich range of topics that uniquely allow for the examination of trends and associations in the realm of care for older people. The current issue of EJA is devoted to the papers that emanated from this symposium. SHARE is a multi-disciplinary cross-national longitudinal infrastructure for the enumeration and analysis of key aspects of ageing in some 20 countries. Initiated in 2004, the SHARE survey has now completed four waves of data collection, including a retrospective life history, from over 30,000 respondents aged 50 and older. Further information on the SHARE enterprise and its importance for the generation of policy-relevant information is provided in the review article in this collection by Axel Borsch-Supan. The papers in the SHARE-based GSA symposium utilized the unique capacity of the SHARE data to examine the context of health and care for the older population and their varying configurations and effects in different countries. The paper by George Ploubidis, Caroline Dale and Emily Grundy identifies country-level differences in somatic health as a function of the level of egalitarianism that exists in the various countries. Florence Jusot, Zeynep Or and Nicolas Sirven examine a country-specific effect on the probability of preventive health care utilization, after controlling for individual-level characteristics. The article by Joanna Geerts and Karel Van den Bosch considers the correlates of transitions across formal and informal care in the respective SHARE countries. Tina Schmid, Martina Brandt and Klaus Haberkern look specifically at the influence of contextual structures on inter-generational support in European countries and the effects of these features on gender inequality. Keren Ladin points, in her article, to the higher utilization of care services among depressed persons, regardless of national setting. Finally, the review article by Axel Borsch-Supan, the founding coordinator of SHARE, considers the papers in this collection in a policy perspective, focusing on the extent to which the identified contextual factors are amenable to change and the mechanisms which may bolster health and the delivery of care in ageing societies. We are pleased to be able to make these papers available to the general public, after their having passed strict academic review by numerous reviewers who, by convention, must remain unnamed. The reviewers’ timely and thoughtful comments were most helpful in bringing the papers to publication, and are warmly appreciated. Thanks are due, also, to the two Editors-in-Chief of the European Journal of Ageing—Dorly Deeg and Hans-Werner Wahl— who kindly gave their agreement to allow publication of the papers in EJA, along with providing critical reviews of their content. The result, we hope, will constitute an important contribution to the literature on the health and care of older people in Europe. H. Litwin (&) Israel Gerontological Data Center, The Hebrew University, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel e-mail: howie.litwin@huji.ac.il

BackgroundLoneliness is a growing issue for public health in an aging society. However, there is a lack of research on loneliness in people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD).MethodsWe analyzed cross-sectional and longitudinal data from wave 5 (N = 559 PwPD) and 6 (N = 442 PwPD) from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Loneliness was assessed using the three-item version of the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale. Descriptive statistics, group comparisons, multiple linear regressions, and generalized estimating equation analysis were performed to explore loneliness prevalence, its relationship with other factors, and its impact on Quality of Life (QoL) in PwPD.ResultsDepending on the used cut-off, the prevalence of loneliness in PwPD ranged from 24.1 to 53.8%. These prevalences were higher compared to people without PD. Loneliness was mainly linked to decreased functional abilities, weaker grip strength, more symptoms of depression, and country of residence. Loneliness was also associated with current QoL and predicts future QoL in PwPD, highlighting its impact on well-being.ConclusionAddressing loneliness could potentially improve QoL for PwPD, making it a modifiable risk factor that clinicians and policy-makers should consider.

Health is a multidimensional concept and consists of different dimensions such as mental and physical health. In this study, we built on this conception of health by investigating the effects of multidimensional health patterns (MHP) on labor force participation among older workers. We used data from 5`006 older workers (mean age: 55.8 years; 56% female) from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. In a first step, we conducted a latent transition analysis with four health indicators (chronic diseases, limitations with activities, self-perceived health, and depressive symptoms) to identify the MHP. In a second step, we assessed the association of the MHP with workers' labor force participation six years after the first point of observation using Wald tests. Our analysis provided us with four MHP: (1) overall healthy workers, (2) workers with moderate activity limitations and low self-perceived health, (3) physically healthy workers with low self-perceived health and depressive symptoms, and (4) workers with overall poor health. We found differences between the MHP in job situation (p < 0.001) and changes in working hours (p < 0.001) four years later, with MHP 4 showing the highest probability of being permanently sick or disabled and MPH 2 and 3 showing the greatest reductions in working hours. Our results imply that physical health is a better predictor of labor force participation among older workers than other dimensions of health. Using health as a multidimensional construct thus allows to better understand the social implications of poor health.

Health is a multidimensional concept and consists of different dimensions such as mental and physical health. In this study, we built on this conception of health by investigating the effects of multidimensional health patterns (MHP) on labor force participation among older workers. We used data from 5`006 older workers (mean age: 55.8 years; 56% female) from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. In a first step, we conducted a latent transition analysis with four health indicators (chronic diseases, limitations with activities, self-perceived health, and depressive symptoms) to identify the MHP. In a second step, we assessed the association of the MHP with workers’ labor force participation six years after the first point of observation using Wald tests. Our analysis provided us with four MHP: (1) overall healthy workers, (2) workers with moderate activity limitations and low self-perceived health, (3) physically healthy workers with low self-perceived health and depressive symptoms, and (4) workers with overall poor health. We found differences between the MHP in job situation (p < 0.001) and changes in working hours (p < 0.001) four years later, with MHP 4 showing the highest probability of being permanently sick or disabled and MPH 2 and 3 showing the greatest reductions in working hours. Our results imply that physical health is a better predictor of labor force participation among older workers than other dimensions of health. Using health as a multidimensional construct thus allows to better understand the social implications of poor health.

Background A non-negligible share of workers is affected by adverse health at the end of their careers. While many of them drop out of the labor force, others remain, prompting the question of how various health indicators interact to influence these different pathways. Therefore, we investigate the effect of multidimensional health patterns on labor force participation among older workers. Methods We used six-year-longitudinal data from 5007 older workers (Mean age: 55.8 years; 55.9 % female) from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. First, we conducted a latent transition analysis with four indicators (chronic diseases, limitations with activities, perceived health, and depression) to identify multidimensional health patterns. Second, we examined individual change in these patterns over time and their association with workers’ job situations and changes in work hours four years later using Wald-tests. Results We identified four multidimensional health patterns with high structural stability over time (ranging from &amp;lt;.005 to .25): (1) Overall healthy workers, (2) workers with moderate activity limitations and low perceived health, (3) overall unhealthy workers, and (4) physically healthy workers with low perceived health and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, individuals predominantly remain in the same pattern over time, except for pattern (4), where 56% of the individuals transition to pattern (1). Moreover, we found differences between the patterns in job situation (p &amp;lt; .001) and changes in work hours (p &amp;lt; .001) four years later with patterns (2) and (4) showing the greatest reduction in working hours. Conclusions The high rate of transitions from the pattern (4) to the more favorable pattern (1) may be explained by the relatively high potential for recovery from depression. Our findings suggest that interventions among older workers with depressive symptoms and moderate activity limitations may improve their chances to remain in the labor force. Key messages • We identified four largely stable multidimensional health patterns over time. • Older workers with moderate activity limitations and low perceived health reduced their work hours most strongly.

Although it is well-known that care responsibilities are strongly gendered also in later life, the consequences for older women of juggling work and care responsibilities are understudied. This study contributes to fill this gap by focusing on the wellbeing implications for older European women of combining work and grandchild care. The role strain and role enhancement theories guide our theoretical predictions. While the former predicts a lower wellbeing due to the double burden of grandchild care and paid work, the latter posits an increase in wellbeing through the accumulation of social identities or roles. By using longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we investigate whether grandmothers who do and those who do not work experience different levels of quality of life, depressive symptoms and life satisfaction. Our statistical model consists in a fixed-effect regression that adjusts for the lagged outcome. Results show that, among grandmothers engaged in paid work, grandchild care is not significantly associated with any of the three outcomes considered. Instead, non-working grandmothers seem to benefit from provision of grandchild care, in terms of higher quality of life and lower number of depressive symptoms. As thus, the provision of grandchild care tends to be beneficial for grandmothers’ wellbeing only if they do not combine this activity with paid work. Juggling paid work and childcare to grandchildren may result in an excessive burden which eliminates the potential benefits of grandchild care on older women’s wellbeing.

There is much research about those who exit the labour market prematurely, however, comparatively little is known about people working longer and about their employment and working conditions. In this paper, we describe the employment and working conditions of men and women working between 65 and 80 years, and compare them with previous conditions of those retired in the same age group. Analyses are based on wave 4 data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with information collected between 2009 and 2011 from 17,625 older men and women across 16 European countries. Besides socio-demographic and health-related factors (physical and mental health), the focus lies on employment conditions (e.g. employment status, occupational position and working hours) and on stressful working conditions, measured in terms of low control at work and effort-reward imbalance. In case of retired people, information on working conditions refer to the last job before retirement. Following descriptive analyses, we then conduct multivariable analyses and investigate how working conditions and poor health are related to labour market participation (i.e. random intercept models accounting for country affiliation and adjusted for potential confounders). Results illustrate that people working between the ages of 65 and 80 are more likely to be self-employed (either with or without employees) and work in advantaged occupational positions. Furthermore, findings reveal that psychosocial working conditions are generally better than the conditions retired respondents had in their last job. Finally, in contrast to those who work, health tends to be worse among retired people. In conclusion, findings deliver empirical evidence that paid employment beyond age 65 is more common among self-employed workers throughout Europe, in advantaged occupations and under-favourable psychosocial circumstances, and that this group of workers are in considerably good mental and physical health. This highlights that policies aimed at increasing the state pension age beyond the age of 65 years put pressure on specific disadvantaged groups of men and women.

In this paper, we study labour force participation behaviour of individuals aged 50-64 in 11 European countries.The data are drawn from the new Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).We examine the value added of objective health variables in relation to potentially endogenous self-reported health.We approach the endogeneity of self-reported health as an omitted variables problem.In line with the literature on the reliability of self-reported health, ambiguous results are obtained.In some countries, self-reported health does a fairly good job: controlling for extra health related variables does not seem to add much to the analysis.In other countries, however, self-reported health is clearly endogenous with results that are in line with the justi.cation hypothesis.They illustrate the multidimensional nature of health and the need to control for objective health variables when analyzing labour force participation behaviour.This makes an instrumental variables approach to deal with endogenous self-reported health less appropriate.

The European Journal of Ageing in the European Year for Active Ageing

Grandparents are important childcare providers, but grandparental relationship status matters. According to several studies, caregiving is reduced after grandparental divorce, but differential responses by grandmothers versus grandfathers have often been glossed over. To explore the effects of relationship status on grandparental care, we analysed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) comparing four grandparental relationship statuses (original couple, widowed, divorced, and repartnered) with respect to grandmothers' and grandfathers' provision of care to their birth children's children. When proximity, kinship laterality, and grandparents' age, health, employment, and financial status were controlled, divorced grandmothers without current partners provided significantly more childcare than grandmothers who were still residing with the grandfather, those who had new partners unrelated to the grandchildren, and widows without current partners. Grandfathers exhibited a very different pattern, providing substantially less grandchild care after divorce. Grandfathers in their original partnerships provided the most grandchild care, followed by widowers, those with new partners and finally those who were divorced. Seemingly contradictory findings in prior research, including studies using SHARE data, can be explained partly by failures to distinguish divorce's effects on grandmothers versus grandfathers, and partly by insufficient controls for the grandmother's financial and employment statuses.

Grandparents are important childcare providers, but grandparental relationship status matters. According to several studies, caregiving is reduced after grandparental divorce, but differential responses by grandmothers versus grandfathers have often been glossed over. To explore the effects of relationship status on grandparental care, we analysed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) comparing four grandparental relationship statuses (original couple, widowed, divorced, and repartnered) with respect to grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ provision of care to their birth children’s children. When proximity, kinship laterality, and grandparents’ age, health, employment, and financial status were controlled, divorced grandmothers without current partners provided significantly more childcare than grandmothers who were still residing with the grandfather, those who had new partners unrelated to the grandchildren, and widows without current partners. Grandfathers exhibited a very different pattern, providing substantially less grandchild care after divorce. Grandfathers in their original partnerships provided the most grandchild care, followed by widowers, those with new partners and finally those who were divorced. Seemingly contradictory findings in prior research, including studies using SHARE data, can be explained partly by failures to distinguish divorce’s effects on grandmothers versus grandfathers, and partly by insufficient controls for the grandmother’s financial and employment statuses.

BackgroundIn the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a population‐based survey of aging in multiple countries, dementia status is self‐reported. However, more than half of dementia cases remain underdiagnosed, which may hinder the use of SHARE data to study dementia determinants and outcomes. We use unsupervised machine learning and longitudinal data from SHARE to discover clusters of patients with probable dementia.MethodsWe selected participants aged 50 or more with consecutive follow‐ups across all SHARE prospective waves. We chose variables informative of participants’ daily function and cognitive performance. We applied a Multiple Factor Analysis followed by a Hierarchical Clustering to the whole longitudinal data set. To evaluate our algorithm, we looked at its discrimination power by comparing it to the self‐reported dementia. We also checked if increased risk of transition to probable dementia was associated with non‐modifiable (age, sex) and modifiable (education, hypertension, obesity, hearing loss, diabetes, physical inactivity, smoking, drinking alcohol, social isolation, depression, air pollution) dementia risk factors. Finally, we replicated this study in the English Longitudinal Survey of Aging (ELSA).ResultsThe baseline sample consisted of 15,278 initial participants across 12 countries. The algorithm identified a higher number of probable dementia cases compared with self‐reported cases. Its discriminative power was good discriminative power across all waves (Area Under the Curve &gt; 0.75). Sensitivity attained its highest value at wave 4 reaching 0.71 [0.66–0.77]. Specificity remained high (&gt; 0.9) in all waves. Both non‐modifiable and modifiable dementia risk factors were associated with increased risk of transition to probable dementia. These results were replicated in ELSA.ConclusionDetection of probable dementia with longitudinal data and unsupervised clustering could be used to study dementia in SHARE and ELSA cohorts. Further validation of this method is needed to apply it in other surveys of aging.

Background: Depression is a frequently occurring mental illness that has been shown to be strongly related to important life outcomes, such as education or labor. Few studies focus on the impact of job status on the risk of depressive symptoms. Aims: We used longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for people aged from 50 to 64 years old across 11 countries to analyze how the type of job is related to depression. Methods: Associations between the type of job and depressive symptoms are analyzed using logistic multilevel models. Results: The risk of depressive symptoms is higher for self-employers. Among the self-employed, women are more at risk (OR: 3.22) as well as those who visit the doctor more frequently. On the other hand, people reporting a good quality of life and those living with a partner demonstrate a lower risk of depressive symptoms. These effects manifest less for employees, while the risk is also higher for women and those visiting the doctor frequently but lower for those who have a good quality of life or children. Conclusions: The stress suffered at work is related to a higher risk of depressive symptoms. The self-employed usually experience more stress at work, as this is related to a larger responsibility and, usually, less stability.