China has been undergoing dramatic socio-economic and demographic changes in the last few decades. The rapid growth of the ageing population will pose tremendous challenges to its public health and social welfare system. This study aims to examine how urbanisation has impacted cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks among middle-aged and older Chinese in two decades, from 1991 to 2011. Data were drawn from a nationwide longitudinal data-set of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) (sweeps 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2011). Participants aged ⩾45 years old were included. A dynamic urbanisation index was created for each community (village or neighbourhood) based on community-level data that can reveal the heterogeneity within and across places and capture dimensions of social, economic and physical characteristics of urban living over time and space. Multi-level modelling analyses (level 1: occasions; level 2: individuals; level 3: households; level 4: communities) were performed on outcomes of CVD risks such as body mass index, waist circumference, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The results show upward trends in all CVD risks for both genders over 20 years of urbanisation after adjustment for socio-economic and demographic confounders. Urbanisation in China is associated with absolute increases in CVD risks over time among its middle-aged and older people, despite its contribution to relative reduction of the rural–urban gap over time. This is particularly true for women from the least urbanised areas. It is relevant to inform policy-making processes to target the most vulnerable groups of older people in China during its rapid urbanisation process. There is a possibility for policy intervention to reduce inequality during the process of China's planned urbanisation.

The risk of living with dementia and, separately, cancer, increases exponentially with age. However, to date, there is a paucity of research investigating the experiences of people living with both these conditions. This study used semi-structured interviews to explore the decision-making and treatment options for people who live with both dementia and cancer. In total, ten people living with both dementia and cancer (aged 39–93 years) and nine family carers were interviewed. Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis was used together with framework matrices to organise the data. In this article four sequential and descriptive themes are presented. ‘Reaching a diagnosis of cancer’ describes the vital role that family carers play in encouraging the person with dementia to seek an explanation for their presenting (undiagnosed cancer) symptoms to their general practitioner. ‘Adjusting to the cancer diagnosis when living with dementia’ outlines a variety of emotional and practical responses to receiving news of the diagnosis. ‘Weighing up the cancer treatment options’ highlights the different decisions and circumstances that family carers and people living with both dementia and cancer are faced with post-diagnosis. ‘Undergoing cancer treatment’ shares the finding that cancer treatment decision-making was not straightforward and that people living with both dementia and cancer would often forget about their cancer and what procedures they had been through.

Over the last 15 years, frailty has become a dominant discourse on late life. Taken-for-granted knowledge and practice can be seen in initiatives such as the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics’ White Book on Frailty. This paper begins with an overview of key themes on frailty from the biomedical literature, followed by critical literature in the social sciences and humanities. It discusses the tensions within the biomedical field, frailty as a social construction and ‘social imaginary’, practices of frailty as historically linked to political systems of care, and frailty as an emotional and relational experience. It then draws on a critical discourse analysis to assess the 2016 White Book on Frailty. Drawing on the idea of ‘significant absences’, the paper highlights the gaps that exist where the social and emotional understandings and political readings of frailty are concerned. The paper concludes by outlining the need to recognise the ‘politics of frailty’ including the power relations that are deeply embedded in the knowledge and practices surrounding frailty, and to incorporate older people's experience and ideas of vulnerability into research, policy and care practice.

The aim of this study was to compare satisfaction with residence, wellbeing and physical health of continuing care retirement community (CCRC) residents with people who considered enrolling in the same CCRCs but elected not to move. A total of 101 participants were recruited from 13 CCRCs located in multiple cities in the United States of America. A phone interview was conducted with participants three months or less from enrolment and one year later. Compared with those who chose not to move, CCRC residents reported lower satisfaction at baseline, but higher satisfaction at one year. Wellbeing declined from baseline to follow-up for both groups, but was higher in CCRC residents both at baseline and at one year. CCRCs might consider giving new residents a longer cancellation period in order to allow sufficient time for the adjustment process. This, in turn, might both prevent an early departure and affect the decision of potential CCRC residents to move into the community.

Cognitive decline and dementia have become major concerns for many individuals reaching later life within contemporary Western societies. This fear of decline is central to the social divide between the third age embodying ideals of maintained health, activity and lifestyle choices, and the fourth age, a social imaginary encompassing the irreversible decline associated with ageing. In this article, we explore how brain-training technologies have become successful by relying on tensions between the third and fourth ages. We review current debates on the concepts contained in brain training and examine the emphasis on the moral virtue of ‘training the brain’ in later life as an extension of fitness and health management. We underline the limited consideration given to social positioning within old age itself in the literature. We further argue that using brain-training devices can support a distancing from intimations of dementia; a condition associated with an ‘ageing without agency’. Drawing on Bourdieu, we use the concept of distinction to describe this process of social positioning. We discuss the impact that such ‘technologies of distinction’ can have on people with dementia by ‘othering’ them. We conclude that the issue of distinction within later life, particularly within the field of cognitive decline, is an important aspect of the current culture of active cognitive ageing.

In light of current pressures within formal social care services, informal carers assume an important role in meeting the care needs of a growing number of older people. Research suggests relationships between care-giving and health are complex and not yet fully understood. Recently, wide-ranging associations between sleep and health have been identified, however, our understanding of the links between care-giving and sleep is limited at present. This study assesses longitudinal patterns in co-resident care-giving and problematic sleep among older people in the United Kingdom. Our sample included 2,470 adults aged 65 years and older from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Problematic sleep was defined as two or more problems in going to sleep, staying asleep or sleep quality. Using logistic regression models, we assessed how co-resident care-giving status, intensity and transitions influence the likelihood of problematic sleep in the following year, adjusting for potential confounding factors. Adjusted analyses found co-resident care-givers were 1.49 (95% confidence interval = 1.06–2.08) times more likely to report problematic sleep in the following year, relative to those not providing care. Care-giving over 20 hours per week and continuous co-resident care-giving also significantly increased the odds of problematic sleep. This suggests older co-resident care-givers may be at greater risk of incurring sleep problems than non-care-givers. Further longitudinal research is needed to investigate care-giver-specific consequences of poor sleep.

This study adopted mixed-methods research to explore the effects of reminiscing about nostalgic smells on the physiological and psychological responses of older people in long-term care facilities. A total of 60 participants were randomly divided into two groups and each participant was either interviewed regarding their reminiscence about nostalgic smells (experimental group) or were engaged in daily conversation (control group). The results indicated that anxiety and depression symptoms were more effectively relieved in the experimental group than in the control group. Moreover, most of the nostalgic smells recalled by the experimental group were associated with naturally occurring smells. Regarding heart rate variability, the normalised low-frequency of the experimental group decreased significantly. The results verified the utility of using reminiscence about olfactory memories in reminiscence therapy as this can calm anxiety and lessen depression, which can be very important for older adults living in long-term care facilities.

The conceptualisation of Alzheimer's disease as an illness with ‘no future’ exposes people with the condition to significant fear and stress. Therefore, exploring how people look ahead to the future in the face of Alzheimer's disease is of foremost importance. Semi-structured interviews (N = 14) explored the future outlook of people with early (N = 5) and late-onset (N = 7) Alzheimer's disease and those who support them (N = 14). Thematic analysis identified how participants managed their changing futures through focusing on positive information, and taking ‘one day at a time’. Younger and older people shared similar future outlook and subsequent coping strategies, as predicted by Carstensen's Socioemotional Selectivity Theory. Both people with Alzheimer's disease and those who support them avoided looking far ahead as a way of managing the uncertain future, and had little awareness of future planning in the context of current policies. Such avoidance suggests that policy which encourages future planning should consider its utility and explore ways of helping people to plan, whilst focusing on daily living.

Research investigating the association between women's work–family trajectories and their retirement intentions is limited. Studies considering how different institutional conditions affect this association are even more limited. To fill this gap, we use the first three waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, 2004–2009, and apply two-level random effects models with country-level fixed effects to a sample of mothers aged 50–64 years. Our dependent variable is the intention to retire as early as possible. We found that the following two different mechanisms are associated with mothers' early retirement intentions: (a) strategies to compensate for opportunity costs and (b) work attachment. When all other factors are equal, mothers with a work career characterised by interruptions and part-time work intend to work longer than other mothers, indicating the need to compensate for lower lifelong earnings at older ages. Some compensatory strategies are also observed among mothers who are classified as ‘never married’, ‘divorced’ or ‘widowed’, who wish to continue their careers. In other cases, evidence supporting work attachment mechanisms is found; for instance, working when the youngest child is younger than six years predicts the intention to delay retirement. These results change according to the welfare regime, underlining the importance of family policies and pension benefits to counterbalance the effect of opportunity costs on mothers' earnings.

There exist three pension systems for urban older residents in China: the pension for government and public institutions (PGPI), the worker's old-age insurance for enterprise employees (WOI) and the urban residents’ social pension insurance (URSPI). This study examines how this multi-track pension system relates to older urbanites’ life satisfaction. The ordered logistic regression model was fitted to analyse the urban sample of the China Longitudinal Ageing Social Survey (60+ years), a nationwide representative survey collected in 2014. The mediation analyses were further adopted to investigate the potential formative mechanisms. A significantly higher level of life satisfaction was detected for those who receive PGPI benefits relative to those who have access to URSPI and WOI, but no significant difference is detected between URSPI and WOI. Further analyses suggest that the advantage of PGPI in terms of life satisfaction is mediated not through monetary resources, but through the dispositional factor of perceived self-value for the society. This study suggests that different institutional configurations of the pension system stratify older urbanites’ subjective wellbeing by virtue of factors that are associated with people's capabilities of acting and functioning.

Internationally, 1 per cent of the general population are living with an intellectual disability and life expectancy is increasing in line with global trends. The majority of people with an intellectual disability live with family. This represents a growing and largely ‘hidden’ population who have, or will have, additional needs as they and their family age. There is limited research about what is important for people with intellectual disability when thinking about getting older. This article reports on a study which explored the concept of ageing and future aspirations with 19 people living with an intellectual disability, aged 37–58 years of age (mean 48 years) and living with someone they identify as family. Using Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory approach and photo-elicitation, constant comparative analysis generated four themes: reciprocating relationships, emerging (in)dependence, configuring ageing and entertaining possibilities. As part of the interview process, photo-elicitation facilitated the expression of associations and perspectives about ageing and conceptualising the future for participants. The findings demonstrate the engagement of people with intellectual disabilities in research and provided unique insights into both their experiences and perspectives on ageing in the context of family. The need for greater flexibility in service planning and delivery are identified, alongside ensuring the meaningful inclusion of people with intellectual disability in decision-making about their own lives as they age.

The psycho-social contexts of older lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals suggest that they may face unique strengths and barriers in accessing social support. The present review aimed to explore what is known about this by providing a synthesis of this area of research and a methodological critique. The Applied Social Sciences Index (ASSIA), Psychinfo and Medline databases were searched and 22 relevant articles were identified. Key findings were extracted and quality was assessed using a standardised rating scale. The findings indicated that although many older LGB people report similar-sized support networks to older heterosexuals, more support came from friends and less from biological family members. Many reported not receiving enough support; it is possible that differences in care-giving between friends and family and anticipated social support difficulties due to previous LGB-stigma experiences partially account for this. Current recruitment strategies may mean that more-connected older LGB people are over-represented in research. There is a lack of research with the ‘old-old’ population, bisexual people, those with significant health needs, those outside the United States of America and those with additional characteristics associated with discrimination. Practical and research implications are discussed and it is suggested that friendship–carer dyads may need support to have more explicit discussions about care-giving roles due to a lack of societal templates for these kinds of relationships.

Spouses (and partners) are the most important source of care in old age. Informal care for frail spouses is provided by both sexes and across all socio-economic backgrounds and welfare policy contexts. There are, however, interesting differences as to whether spouses care alone, receive informal support from other family members or formal support from professional helpers, or outsource the care of their spouse completely. The present article contributes to the literature by differentiating between solo spousal care-giving and shared or outsourced care-giving arrangements, as well as between formal and informal care support. Moreover, we show how care-giving arrangements vary with gender, socio-economic status and welfare policy. Adding to previous research, we compare 17 countries and their expenditures on two elder-care schemes: Cash-for-Care and Care-in-Kind. The empirical analyses draw on the most recent wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data from 2015. Our results show that men have a higher propensity to share care-giving than women, albeit only with informal supporters. As expected, welfare policy plays a role insofar as higher expenditure on Cash-for-Care schemes encourage informally outsourced care-giving arrangements, whereas Care-in-Kind reduce the likelihood for informally shared or outsourced care-giving arrangements. Moreover, the influence of these welfare policy measures differs between individuals of different socio-economic status but not between men and women.

Observation of long-term trends within countries is needed to increase insight into how policy initiatives are reflected in the use of care over time in addition to individual determinants of care use. In the past decades, Dutch care policies have favoured homecare and reduced the availability of institutional care which extended the care responsibilities of formal and informal care-givers at home. This study investigates the changes in the use of informal and formal homecare, community services and residential care among cognitively impaired older adults over time in the Netherlands. In addition, of special interest here are the associations of the presence of a spouse, other family members or social network with care use, and the interdependency between the use of different types of care. The study employs the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) covering the years 1992–2012, analysed with generalised estimating equations. The data consisted of 1,022 observations gathered from 813 respondents aged 65–85. The respondents were cognitively impaired according to the age- and education-standardised Mini-Mental State Examination score. The analyses took into account several individual determinants of care use. The use of informal care and residential care decreased while the use of formal homecare and community services remained the same. Simultaneously, the proportion of those who did not use the studied care types increased. The contribution of partners in informal care decreased. Informal care and formal homecare use increasingly became complementary services. The findings suggest that the decreases in informal care and residential care have not been replaced by other types of care, as reflected in the increased number of persons receiving no care. Care policies should not rely excessively on the availability of informal help and should guarantee adequate formal help, especially for those in high need.

A key issue in understanding the social lives of older people is how active they are in coping with the demands of ageing. Often the ‘successfulness’ of ageing is measured with medical and biological criteria. While the notion of ‘active ageing’ is more appealing and neutral, its meaning is often obscured, fragmented or inconsistent. Our aims in this study were to establish ‘active ageing’ as a process in which older people try to take control of their lives by conforming to or resisting different social imaginaries of later life, and to explore individuals’ strategies for making the best use of available resources and fending off potential risks of social exclusion. We adopted a two-stage research design. First, we produced artistic images that corresponded to social imaginaries of tensions in ageing in three social domains (politics, mass media and older people). Then, we used these images as stimuli in interviews with a balanced sample of 32 middle-aged and older residents of Santiago, Chile, to discover their strategies for coping with these tensions. Although imaginaries of ageing tended to describe ageing in terms of restrictions and stereotypes, we found diverse and increasingly flexible life projects and expectations of activity in later life.

This meta-analysis examined the prevalence of depression and burden among informal care-givers of people with dementia (PwD) and compared the prevalence of depression between male and female, and spousal and non-spousal, care-givers. The quality of studies was evaluated and moderator variables explored. A search of six electronic databases (PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, MEDLINE Complete, SCOPUS, Web of Science and ProQuest) was conducted from the first available date to the 31 October 2017. Inclusion criteria involved observational studies on the prevalence of burden or depression among informal care-givers of PwD. Forty-three studies were examined with a total of 16,911 participants. The adjusted pooled prevalence of depression was 31.24 per cent (95% confidence interval (CI) = 27.70, 35.01) and burden was 49.26 per cent (95% CI = 37.15, 61.46), although heterogeneity among prevalence estimates was high. Depression prevalence estimates differed according to the instrument used and the continent where the study was conducted. The odds of having depression were almost one and a half times higher in female compared to male care-givers. No significant difference was observed between spouses and non-spouses. Most studies had a medium risk of bias. Results suggest a great need within this population for interventions that are effective at reducing burden and depressive symptoms. It therefore appears imperative for dementia services that are not providing such interventions to do so.

This study explored the concept of ‘giving up’ from the perspective of care staff working in care homes, and their everyday communication and hidden knowledge concerning what they think about this taboo topic and the context it reflects. Moving to a care home is a major transition where cumulative losses can pose risks to mental health in later life. If not recognised, this vulnerability can lead to depression which extends to suicide ideation and behaviours in the form of self-harm and self-neglect. Care homes are a significant place of care until death, yet a discourse of silence means that self-harm and suicide is under-reported or not attended to with specialist expertise. The layperson's concept of an older person ‘giving up’ on life is hardly discussed in the literature. This co-produced qualitative study used an inductive approach to explore this phenomenon through focus groups with 33 care staff across four care homes in South-East England. Findings paint a complex picture, highlighting tensions in providing the right support and creating spaces to respond to such challenging situations. ‘Giving up’ requires skilled detailed assessment to respond to risks alongside improved training and support for paid carers, to achieve a more holistic strategy which capitalises on significant relationships within a wider context.

Despite the well-documented health benefits of physical activity in older adults, participation levels remain low. With rapid global population ageing, intensive efforts are needed to encourage higher levels of participation to ameliorate the negative effects of physical inactivity for older individuals and society as a whole. The aim of this qualitative study was to inform future physical activity promotion interventions by examining factors contributing to low activity levels among older people undertaking less than half the recommended level of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 102 (65% female) community-dwelling Western Australians aged 60+ years (mean = 71.52, standard deviation = 6.26) who engaged in ⩽75 minutes of MVPA per week as measured by accelerometers. Several modifiable and unmodifiable barriers were identified, of which poor health featured most prominently. Lifetime physical inactivity, caring duties, low motivation, misperceptions of physical activity and ageing, and a lack of affordable and attractive options were the other barriers identified. The results suggest that strategies are needed to raise awareness of current physical activity guidelines, normalise engagement in MVPA throughout the lifespan, develop initiatives to motivate participation, improve the availability of affordable physical activity programmes that are attractive to this population segment, and facilitate participation among those with intensive caring responsibilities.

Although retirement involves a radical change in daily activities, income, social roles and relationships, and the transition from paid work into retirement can, therefore, be expected to affect sleep, little is known about the effects of old-age retirement on changes in sleep disturbances, and how the impact of retirement may vary by gender, age and prior working conditions. This study modelled reported sleep disturbances up to nine years before to nine years following retirement in a sample of 2,110 participants from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH). Sleep disturbances over the retirement transition were modelled using repeated-measures regression analysis with Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) in relation to gender, age at retirement, working patterns (night work, full-time/part-time work), control over work hours, and psychological and physical working conditions. The analyses controlled for civil status, education level, income obtained from registers and self-rated health. Retiring from paid work was associated with decreased sleep disturbances. Greater reductions in sleep disturbances were reported by women, as well as by participants who retired before age 65 years, who were working full-time, who lacked control over their work hours and who had high psychological demands. These results, suggesting that old-age retirement from paid work is associated with reductions in disturbed sleep, pose a challenge for governments seeking to increase retirement ages.

Drawing on the revived literature on the subjective dimension of ageing, this paper investigates whether people aged 65+, usually defined as old, do actually feel old and which events they associate with feeling old. Logistic models are used on unique data from the 2013 survey called ‘I Do Not Want to Be Inactive’, conducted on individuals aged 65–74 in Italy (N = 828). It is found that a large proportion of respondents do not feel old at all. The analyses show that women are more likely than men to feel old and to think that society considers them old. While men feel old mainly when they retire, women associate this feeling with loneliness, loss of independence and death of loved ones. Higher-educated people are less likely to associate feeling old with loneliness and boredom than their lower-educated counterparts. The findings have important implications for the conceptualisation of ageing. Most people who are old according to the standard threshold of 65 do not consider reaching this age as a distinctive marker of old age in their lifecourse. This suggests that absolute thresholds for setting the start of old age are questionable. Feeling old seems to be mainly influenced by events, such as retirement and death of loved ones, hinting to the importance of the social construction of ageing in addition to its biological dimension. Researchers and policy makers are encouraged to give more attention to layperson views on ageing.