The felt obligation to return a benefit, termed reciprocity, has been identified as motivating care exchanges between older adults and their younger family members. Within the context of large-scale emigration of young adults from the Indian state of Kerala, this study examines how left-behind older adults and their family care-givers recognise, interpret and give meaning to reciprocal exchanges, expectations and obligations in their care relationship. Employing a social exchange perspective, we qualitatively explore the norm of reciprocity through in-depth interviews of 48 participants (older adults and their care-givers) from emigrant households. Older adults and their care-givers identified reciprocal notions in their care exchange relationship that provided an interpretive framework for describing expectations, motivations, obligations and experiences across care-giving relationships. Spousal care-givers derived reciprocal motives and mutual care obligations through the institution of marriage. Adult children recognised filial duties and responsibilities and were in principle prepared to provide care to their parents. Reciprocating the support received and the likelihood of intergenerational transfers motivated care exchanges from adult children to their older parents. Daughters-in-law executed transferred filial roles from their emigrant husbands and bore a larger burden of care. Primary adult care-givers relied on the ‘demonstration effect’, hoping that children observe the care-giving process and emulate it later. Imbalances and non-reciprocity in the care exchange led to frustrations and threatened the care relationships.

The policy announcement in November 2018 by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that: ‘from today, let this be clear: tech transformation is coming’ indicates that confidence in care technologies, so apparent over the past decade in policy circles, remains unabated. This article suggests, based on evidence of significant limitations in technological solutions to care needs, that this confidence is misplaced. The focus is on remote care technologies – primarily telecare – which involve the passive or real-time monitoring of recipients, the majority of whom will be older people. These information and communication technologies (ICT) have been heralded by politicians, policy makers and industry interests alike as a solution to the challenges of demographic change and social care demand. While the research evidence suggests telecare works well for some people, in some circumstances, there are also significant complexities in its use, challenges presented to care relationships, and conflicting interpretations around its efficacy and cost-effectiveness. These critical issues have been marginalised in the mainstream discourse around telecare policy. This article explores the dissonance between this policy and the available evidence, drawing on a Multiple Streams Approach to analyse the emergence of, and continued confidence in, telecare policy based on a congruence of views across policy interests. To the extent that social care for older people is now in crisis, the article argues that the discourse around telecare represents an example of ‘silver bullet’ thinking: that is, too much focus on a single policy solution to address complex problems. Accordingly, the crisis in social care has deepened, without alternative policy proposals being available to address it. The renewed push for ICT-based solutions to this crisis in social care ought therefore to be viewed with some concern.

Health insurance schemes are important for bridging gaps in health-care needs between the rich and poor, especially in contexts where poverty is higher among seniors (persons aged 65 years and above). In this study we examined (a) gender-based predictors of unmet health-care need among seniors and (b) whether access was influenced by wealth status (measured by income quintiles). Gender-specific negative log–log regression models were fitted to data from the Study on Global Ageing and Health to examine associations between unmet health-care need and health insurance status controlling for theoretically relevant covariates. Insurance status was an important determinant of men and women's unmet health-care need but the relationship was moderated by income quintile for women and not men. While occupation was important for men, religion, marital status and income quintile were significantly associated with women's unmet health-care need. Based on the observed gender differences, we recommend the implementation of programmes aimed at improving the economic situation of older people, particularly women.

Older parents in China rely heavily on their adult children for instrumental assistance. In different multi-child families, multiple offspring may co-operate in providing instrumental support to older parents in distinct ways in terms of how much support they provide on average and how much differentiation exists between them when they provide such support within a family. We aimed to identify different within-family patterns in relation to multiple offspring's instrumental support to an older parent in Chinese multi-child families, and to investigate potential predictors for different within-family patterns. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (2016), we had a working sample of 5,790 older adults aged 60+ (mean = 68.54, standard deviation = 6.60). We employed latent profile analysis (LPA) to classify within-family patterns and multinomial logistic regression to investigate predictors. Our findings identified three within-family patterns: dissociated (59.10%), highly differentiated (29.60%) and united-filial (11.30%). Older parents in the highly differentiated families tended to be older, mothers, divorced/widowed and to have poorer physical health compared to their counterparts in the dissociated families. In contrast, the composition characteristics of multiple adult children played more important roles in determining the united-filial within-family pattern. The united-filial families were more likely to have fewer adult children, at least one adult daughter and at least one co-residing adult child.

There has been a renewed call for a revaluing of informal caring in order to counter the way that caring is undervalued, taken for granted and invisible. Travel is one area where a detailed critique of this issue has emerged with the concept of ‘mobility of care’, however, this concept has only been applied in relation to younger age groups, and our understanding of mobilities of care in later life remains underdeveloped. By ‘mobilities of care’ we mean journeys made for the purpose of giving and receiving informal care and support. This paper draws on the mobility narratives of 99 older people (aged 55 and above) living in three locations in the North of England who participated in a two-year qualitative longitudinal study that explored the inter-play between mobility, wellbeing and life transitions. We focused on the experience of managing life transitions rather than assume that chronology per se determines wellbeing. Narratives of ageing emphasise the importance of getting out and about, and being socially connected active citizens. Our study demonstrates that for many older people getting out and about is not for leisure or utility purposes but to give support and care. As such, these journeys have a particular significance in the lives of older people and in the construction of roles, meaning and identity in later life.

Long-term poverty, precarious employment, low pay, the increased pension age and real-term reductions in welfare benefits, including bereavement allowances, have brought into focus the financial vulnerability of many older women aged 55 years and older in the United Kingdom. In this article, survey data were analysed alongside evidence from observations of debt support meetings and interviews with older women who were receiving debt advice from a support charity. The findings suggest that older women were more likely to have financial problems than older men, particularly those women who were living on low incomes and who were separated or divorced. Following the breakdown of a relationship, many older women were at increased risk of more debt and bankruptcy, particularly those aged between 55 and 64 years and those in routine and semi-routine occupations. Many women had kept their financial problems hidden due to fear and shame whilst bringing up their children and some had been subject to coercive control and economic abuse by their former husbands or partners. It is important that any pension reforms, changes to minimum wage rates, and new divorce and domestic abuse legislation and welfare policies take account of the circumstances of separated, divorced and widowed older women. More financial support and advice needs to be provided to older women facing financial difficulties.

The health and social benefits of volunteering behaviours by older adults are well acknowledged. However, few review articles have been concerned with the correlates/dimensions of older adults’ volunteerism. Some focused only on the North American context or reviewed studies only up to 2008. This study reviewed the recent global literature in the past decade about the correlates of older adults’ volunteerism. We carried out a literature search in PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts and Google Scholar to identify empirical journal publications about the correlates of older adults’ (age 60+) volunteerism from 2008 to 2019. Among 112 initially eligible papers, 41 were selected. Findings were synthesised using the framework of the Socioecological Model. Existing studies mainly have used quantitative methodologies and were conducted within the context of a single Western country. Motivations included higher education, morale and mentality, previous experiences, social network, community cohesion and organisational management. Major barriers were health and financial constraints. Few studies focused on macro-level correlates. Irrelevant and confounding correlates were also discussed. We suggest practitioners recruit and retain older volunteers by identifying their needs and optimising management within the organisation. Policy makers should create a supportive environment and increase resource accessibility. Future research could conduct cross-cultural comparisons, use diverse methodologies and embrace more correlates, especially at the macro-level.

Home care for older people in England is commissioned through local authorities working predominantly with independent providers of care. Commissioners operate in a market model, planning and procuring home care services for local populations. Their role involves ‘managing’ and ‘shaping’ the market to ensure an adequate supply of care providers. Another imperative, emerging from the principles of personalisation, is the drive to achieve user outcomes rather than ‘time and task’ objectives. Little formal research has investigated the way commissioners reconcile these different requirements and organise commissioning. This study investigated commissioning approaches using qualitative telephone interviews with ten commissioners from different local authorities in England. The characteristics of commissioning were analysed thematically. Findings indicated (a) commissioning involved complex systems and processes, uniquely shaped for the local context, but frequently changed, suggesting a constant need for reframing commissioning arrangements; (b) partnerships with providers were mainly transactional, with occasional examples of collaborative models, that were considered to facilitate flexible services more appropriate for commissioning for personalised outcomes; and (c) only a small number of commissioners had attempted to reconcile the competing and incompatible goals of tightly prescribed contracting and working collaboratively with providers. A better understanding of flexible contracting arrangements and the hallmarks of a trusting collaboration is required to move beyond the procedural elements of contracting and commissioning.

This article looks at how retirement timing is changing in Italy. A first aim is descriptive and it is to identify recent trends in retirement age, following the pension reform. Then the focus is on factors which may favour or hinder the extension of the working career of older workers. They are studied by looking at the reasons for retirement, introducing the distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement, and some predictors of retirement. Some of them relate to the work history of individuals, in particular the stability/instability of careers due to episodes of unemployment. The level of education and gender, two variables that may affect the employability of older workers, have also been considered. The study is based on a longitudinal analysis (Kaplan–Meier survival estimates of transition to retirement and binomial logit discrete-time model for the analysis of retirement predictors) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Job Episodes Panel data. They refer to a sample of 1,999 individuals born between 1911 and 1959. Although the various pension reforms initiated in Italy in the 1990s have not yet been fully implemented, retirement age is rising, even in the case of involuntary retirement. Regarding work history, the advantages of a working career with a small number of unemployment episodes emerge from the study.

Singapore is experiencing a rapid growth in its ageing population with most of the islands’ inhabitants living in high-rise apartments due to the scarcity of land. The Chinese community living in Singapore comprises the largest ethnic group and they are more likely to live together under one roof in an intergenerational family grouping. Currently, there are gaps in understanding intergenerational Singapore-Chinese families and their approach to caring at home for a family member with dementia. The aim of this longitudinal qualitative study was to understand better this everyday care-giving experience. Using semi-structured biographical interviews and digital photographs to elicit family stories, five intergenerational Singapore-Chinese families were visited at home for a period of between six and 15 months. Each recruited intergenerational family was treated as a ‘case’. Narrative analysis of the data was applied within and between cases and resulted in the emergence of three themes that represented various dynamics in the data. The three themes were identified as: (1) family values, which is about the cultural context in which everyday care takes place, the religious beliefs and practices of the intergenerational Singapore-Chinese families, and the practice of filial piety; (2) family support, which is about everyday access to family and service networks, including the contribution of the live-in maid in caring for the family member with dementia; and (3) family bonds, which is about the maintenance of intergenerational family relations in the Chinese family kinship system.

The study of resilience in an older adult population is expanding rapidly. However, most theoretical models of resilience have been developed with children or young to middle-aged adults. The objective of the present study was to review systematically the qualitative literature examining resilience in older adults, and to develop a comprehensive model of resilience in older adulthood. A qualitative meta-synthesis was conducted to review the qualitative literature examining resilience from older adults’ perspectives. An exhaustive search of the literature revealed 1,752 articles. From these articles, 34 studies meeting inclusion criteria were selected for analysis. Across the 34 studies analysed, eight themes were revealed as important for achieving resilience later in life: perseverance and determination, self-efficacy and independence, purpose and meaning, positive perspective, social support, faith and prayer, previous experience and being proactive. These themes can be organised into a four-factor model: (a) Intrapersonal Protective Factors; (b) Interpersonal Protective Factors; (c) Spiritual Protective Factors; and (d) Experiential Protective Factors. This study presents a new model of resilience in older adulthood that is grounded in qualitative literature and is relevant and appropriate for an older adult population. This research may be useful for clinicians, support workers and researchers working with older individuals through improving our understanding of what contributes to resilience later in life.