Later-life Migration Research Articles

Comparative Recall and Precision of Simple and Expert Searches in Google Scholar and Eight Other Databases

This study evaluates the effectiveness of simple and expert searches in Google Scholar (GS), EconLit, GEOBASE, PAIS, POPLINE, PubMed, Social Sciences Citation Index, Social Sciences Full Text, and Sociological Abstracts. It assesses the recall and precision of 32 searches in the field of later-life migration: nine simple keyword searches and 23 expert searches constructed by demography librarians at three top universities. For simple searches, Google Scholar’s recall and precision are well above average. For expert searches, the relative effectiveness of GS depends on the number of results users are willing to examine. Although Google Scholar’s expert-search performance is just average within the first fifty search results, GS is one of the few databases that retrieves relevant results with reasonably high precision after the fiftieth hit. The results also show that simple searches in GS, GEOBASE, PubMed, and Sociological Abstracts have consistently higher recall and precision than expert searches. This can be attributed not to differences in expert-search effectiveness, but to the unusually strong performance of simple searches in those four databases.

Migration in later life: evidence from the British Household Panel Study

This article uses data from the British Household Panel Study over the period 1991 - 2007 to examine the factors associated with residential mobility among people aged 50 and over. In line with earlier research, the likelihood of migrating, that is, changing address, is found to vary according to the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the older person. Those in late middle age (50-59) and the oldest-old (90 and over) were most likely to move. Migration was also strongly associated with changes in partnership, health and economic status during the last 12 months, highlighting the importance of seeing migration within a life course context with certain life course events such as divorce, widowhood or retirement being important triggers for prompting a move. As divorce and remarriage become more common in later life, 'relationship driven migration' is likely to become more important, adding a new category to the classical typology of later life migration.

Google Scholar Out-Performs Many Subscription Databases when Keyword Searching

Google Scholar Out-Performs Many Subscription Databases when Keyword Searching

Health Trajectories Among Older Movers

To examine health trajectories among older migrants by reason for move. Data from the 1992 to 2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are used to model trajectories of self-rated health and activity of daily living (ADL) limitations that occurred prior seven types of moves. There are substantial differences across the reason-for-move groups in initial levels of self-rated health. Declines in self-rated health among nursing home movers are more than two times steeper than the other reason-for-move groups. Employment, comfort, economic security, life crisis, and affiliation movers have low initial levels of ADL limitations and slow increases in ADL limitations. Health and nursing home movers have higher initial ADL limitations and increases in ADL limitations that are three and seven times higher respectively than the other groups. The results are consistent with the predictions of Litwak and Longino's (1987) typology of later-life migration and the extant literature on later-life migration. Implications for communities are considered.

Migration and Psychological Well-Being Among Older Adults: A Growth Curve Analysis Based on Panel Data From the Health and Retirement Study, 1996-2006

A vibrant body of research examines migration among older adults. Existing research, however, grants scarce attention to the implications of later-life migration for the migrants themselves. Our research focuses on the impacts of migration on depressive symptomatology among older U.S. adults. Our analysis employs six waves of panel data from the Health and Retirement Study, 1996-2006. Growth curve modeling techniques are employed. Net of other stressful life events, migration effects appear to vary significantly across persons. Findings highlight the particularly depressive impact of moves motivated by negative life events or circumstances. Results further suggest that later life moves may be especially stressful for women and as individuals age. The stress of moving late in life may depend on social integration at destination. Further research should pursue this issue. Study limitations and additional directions for further research are delineated.

Older International Migrants: who migrates to England and Wales in later life?

Over the past half century, two major demographic phenomena have risen to prominence: population ageing and international migration (United Nations, 2005). It has recently been estimated that there are over 200 million international migrants in the world (International Organization for Migration, 2008). This comprises around 3 per cent of the current world population (U.S Census Bureau, 2008). The increasingly mobile global population is also ageing. In 2006, the UN estimated that 11 per cent of the world's population was aged 60 and over (United Nations, 2006); in the UK those aged 60 and over accounted for 21 per cent of the total population (Office for National Statistics, 2006). Previous UK research on migration in later life has primarily focused on international migration from England and Wales to foreign destinations in retirement (Williams et al, 1997; King et al, 1998; Warnes and Guy, 1998; King et al, 2000; Casado-Diaz et al, 2004) and there has been little research on migration to the UK at older ages. This article contributes to the latter literature by beginning to create a profile of those individuals who migrate to England and Wales from outside the UK at retirement age.

Exploring older women's citizenship: understanding the impact of migration in later life

ABSTRACTResearch on the ways in which having been an international migrant in later life shapes the welfare needs, preferences and expectations of non-native older people in rich countries is in its infancy, for both the ageing and migration fields have been slow to examine the experiences of older migrants. This paper focuses upon the welfare citizenship experiences of older women who migrated in later life to England, either as refugees or as post-retirement migrants. It reports findings from interviews and focus groups conducted with black Caribbean, Irish, Chinese and Somali older women migrants in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK, as part of the Older Women's Lives and Voices Study. The paper explores their experiences of accessing welfare citizenship and the barriers they encountered in accessing mainstream services. In particular, it examines the unequal platform from which older migrants who do not speak English access welfare citizenship rights and services, and assesses the important constraints of discrimination and language differences. Despite the obstacles, the older women participants were actively pursuing their inclusion in welfare rights and services. The paper argues for more recognition of the important enabling role that informal systems of support provided by participation in community or cultural organisations plays in the welfare citizenship and agency of minority ethnic older women.

Google Scholar Search Performance: Comparative Recall and Precision

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of Google Scholar and 11 other bibliographic databases (Academic Search Elite, AgeLine, ArticleFirst, EconLit, GEOBASE, MEDLINE, PAIS International, POPLINE, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, and SocINDEX), focusing on search performance within the multidisciplinary field of later-life migration. The results of simple keyword searches are evaluated with reference to a set of 155 relevant articles identified in advance. In terms of both recall and precision, Google Scholar performs better than most of the subscription databases. This finding, based on a rigorous evaluation procedure, is contrary to the impressions of many early reviewers. The paper concludes with a discussion of a new approach to document relevance in educational settings—an approach that accounts for the instructors' goals as well as the students' assessments of relevance.

Actuation of Mobility Intentions Among the Young-Old: An Event-History Analysis

Although migration decision making is central to understanding later-life migration, the critical step between migration intentions and mobility outcomes has received only limited empirical attention. We address two questions: How often are intended moves actuated? What factors condition the likelihood that mobility intentions will be actuated? We employ data from the 1994-2002 Health and Retirement Study, which is a nationally representative panel targeting households containing persons aged 53 to 63 years at baseline. Event-history techniques are used to examine the link between reported mobility intentions at baseline and mobility outcomes across the study period, net of relevant controls. We conduct separate household-level analyses for couple and noncouple households and recognize three types of moves: local, family oriented, and nonlocal. Findings confirm the utility of mobility expectations as a predictor of future mobility. More importantly, results highlight the complex nature of later-life mobility. The actuation of mobility intentions appears to operate differently in couple than in noncouple households. Moreover, our findings suggest that the role of several key variables depends on the type of move under consideration. The ability to identify potential "retirement migrants" may be of practical importance for state and local government officials as well as developers interested in recruiting or retaining young-old residents. Our study offers insight on the interpretation of stated mobility intentions. Moreover, consistent with early theoretical work in the field, our analysis suggests that empirical studies must account for heterogeneity among older movers in order to avoid misleading results.

Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field

This paper evaluates the content of Google Scholar and seven other databases (Academic Search Elite, AgeLine, ArticleFirst, GEOBASE, POPLINE, Social Sciences Abstracts, and Social Sciences Citation Index) within the multidisciplinary subject area of later-life migration. Each database is evaluated with reference to a set of 155 core articles selected in advance—the most important studies of later-life migration published from 1990 to 2000. Of the eight databases, Google Scholar indexes the greatest number of core articles (93%) and provides the most uniform publisher and date coverage. It covers 27% more core articles than the second-ranked database (SSCI) and 2.4 times as many as the lowest-ranked database (GEOBASE). At the same time, a substantial proportion of the citations provided by Google Scholar are incomplete (32%) or presented without abstracts (33%).

Disciplinary perspectives on later-life migration in the core journals of social gerontology.

The authors examine the bibliographic structure of recent research on later-life migration, highlighting the contributions of particular journals and disciplines. The authors identify the primary journals publishing research in this area, including a set of four core journals within the field of social gerontology. They evaluate the disciplinary affiliations of authors publishing in the core journals and the extent to which those journals cite relevant research published elsewhere. Geographical and economic perspectives on later-life migration are underrepresented within the core journals of social gerontology. In particular, major articles published outside the core journals are seldom cited within those journals. Although the core journals of social gerontology account for over a third of the recent literature on later-life migration, they present only a partial (chiefly sociological) perspective on the subject.

Later-Life Migration in the United States: A Review of Recent Research

This bibliography summarizes the most important recent literature on elderly migration and retirement migration in the U.S. and Canada, providing an interdisciplinary reviewof articles published between January 1990 and December 2000. It describes and evaluates 232 studies dealing with migration theory and methods, the determinants of later-life mobility, patterns of migration, destination choice, consequences of migration, local and regional development, seasonal migration, return migration, and related topics.

Place Characteristics and Later-Life Migration

This article examines the impact of origin and destination characteristics on the internal migration of retired migrant groups that have been defined on the basis of their life-course attributes. Separate regression analyses of in-migration, out-migration, and local mobility were conducted for each of three groups: amenity migrants, assistance migrants, and severely disabled migrants not living with a spouse. The results are generally consistent with the life-course model of migration. Amenity migrants are strongly attracted by pleasant climates and favorable economic conditions but tend to avoid large metropolitan areas. Assistance migrants, notable for their tendency to live in low-cost housing, do not choose the counties or metropolitan areas with the lowest average rents but appear to select low-cost housing within particular areas after choosing those areas on the basis of other criteria. Migrants with severe disabilities are especially likely to leave those places where nursing home facilities are inadequate.

Types and Patterns of Later-life Migration

Types and Patterns of Later-life Migration

International migration in later life: social care and policy implications

An increasing number of older people are international migrants. Even where older people have not been migrants themselves, it is increasingly likely that international migration will touch their personal lives, either through significant family members or through their own decisions to resettle in later life. Despite the growing importance of long-distance travel and resettlement in other countries, however, the relationship between migration and ageing is a relatively neglected topic in gerontology. Using the examples of migrants in minority ethnic communities, this paper proposes a typology or scheme with which to relate (a) the principal reasons for migration earlier in the lifecourse to (b) the range of possibilities for migration which may face older people in later life. Conclusions about care needs and identity are discussed with reference to older migrants in ethnic minorities in Britain. It is argued that the ‘minority migrant’ example (while a distinctive experience in each community) has important lessons for, and applications to, understanding general patterns of international migration in later life.

Urbanization, ageing and migration: some evidence from African settlements in Cape Town

This paper is based on secondary analysis of data obtained from the 1995 Western Cape Community Housing Trust study on the demographic and socio-economic dynamics of the African population in the Metropolitan Cape Town area (WCCHT, 1995). The sample consisted of 807 households, of which 113 sheltered at least one person aged 60 years and over (elderly households). Statistical information on household composition, housing and infrastructure, standard of living items, household economy, migration and mobility, community integration and perceived quality of life are drawn together for elderly and young households. A comparison of their profiles shows that elderly households in the metropolitan area tend to be larger, more prone to the exigencies of unemployment, and more likely to be sheltered. In formal houses and the established townships of Langa, Guguletu and Nyanga than young households. This geographical distribution coincides with better housing infrastructure and more consumer durables. Nevertheless, in terms of income elder households tend to be significantly poorer than their younger counterparts. The WCCHT data indicate that social pensioners in urban areas - as with their rural counterparts - act as magnets for economically weaker persons and that pensions are thus important redistributive mechanisms which enable the survival of structurally vulnerable families in urban settings. Contrary to common belief, older citizens have participated in the recent mobility upsurge, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. This holds good for intra-urban as well as for rural-urban/urban-rural movements. It appears that elderly urban households are often part of an integrated urban/rural nexus. Considering the policy relevance of this finding and the paucity of knowledge about later-life migration, further quantitative and qualitative studies are called for.

Housing aspirations and migration in later life: developments during the 1980s.

"This paper tests hypotheses concerning the differentiation of early and late old age in the United Kingdom with reference to housing preferences and requirements and their translation into migration. Evidence is drawn from the 1991...census and from a representative sample of elderly people in SE England. The sources demonstrate the continued elaboration of long-distance, metropolitan-decentralizing migrations around the age of retirement. Also shown are relatively high rates of residential mobility among people in their seventies and eighties. Most of their migrations are short distance, but nonetheless with a net redistributional effect that sustains urban decentralization at the oldest ages. There is no evidence of significant return migration to London at advanced ages. From the survey responses, distinctive housing dissatisfactions are identified in early and late retirement, but neither set exactly matches expressed motivations for moves."