The study reported in this paper is part of the Umeå 85+ project in Sweden. The aim was to investigate gender perspectives among ‘the oldest old’, by asking men and women in advanced old age living in a sparsely populated area of northern Sweden to reflect on how life might have been if they had been born the other sex. Thematic narratives from nine men and seven women were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The content of these narratives was resolved into eight categories in two domains, respectively men's and women's reflections about being born the opposite sex. The narratives of both the men and women indicated that they were satisfied with their actual birth sex. The men were aware that if they had been born female, they would probably have experienced more hard work and had a more restricted life, and they were conscious of both women's relative powerlessness and their greater ability to manage and organise work within the home. The women's narratives described a femininity characterised by longing for a state of being unconcerned when young, and their narratives also displayed awareness of women's physical strength and that men's lives had also been hard.

This article provides information on the movements into and out of paid work by mid-life women. This is a group whose representation in the paid workforce is growing as population ageing proceeds and as educational qualifications expand. It is also a group that will be critical to any labour supply response to the economic challenges posed by population ageing. However, current understandings of the needs and circumstances of mid-life women in paid work are limited. To help address this knowledge gap we use data from the first five waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001–2005) to identify the causal influences of health, care and other factors on the ability of mid-life women to remain in and re-enter paid work. The results show that poor health and/or substantial care roles have a negative impact on the employment chances of this group. However, importantly, there is asymmetry in these health and care effects, in that improvements in health and/or reductions in care roles do not increase the chances of returning to paid work. This finding indicates that many mid-life women who experience poor health and/or undertake large care roles face substantial long-term negative consequences for their employment chances and, thus, their retirement and pre-retirement incomes.

This paper argues that the structured dependency thesis must be extended to incorporate political power. It outlines a political framework of analysis with which to identify who gains and who loses from social policy. I argue that public policy for older people is a product not only of social structures but also of political decision-making. The Schneider and Ingram (1993) ‘target populations’ model is used to investigate how the social construction of groups as dependent equates with lower levels of influence on policy making. In United Kingdom and European research, older people are identified as politically quiescent, but conversely in the United States seniors are viewed as one of the most influential and cohesive interest groups in the political culture. Why are American seniors perceived as politically powerful, while older people in Europe are viewed as dependent and politically weak? This paper applies the ‘target populations’ model to senior policy in the Republic of Ireland to investigate how theoretical work in the United States may be used to identify the significance of senior power in policy development. I conclude that research must recognise the connections between power, politics and social constructions to investigate how state policies can influence the likelihood that seniors will resist structured dependency using political means.

Research 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.

Excess winter morbidity and mortality among older people remain significant public health issues in those European countries which experience relatively mild winter temperatures, particularly the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, Portugal and Spain. In the UK, episodes of severe winter weather, when ambient temperatures fall below 5° C, are associated with peaks in general practitioner consultations, hospital admissions, and cardiovascular deaths among those aged over 65. While research indicates that such health risks could be substantially reduced by the adoption of appropriate behavioural strategies, accessible and credible advice on how older people can reduce risk during ‘cold snaps’ is lacking. This paper describes a programme of research that aimed: (a) to translate the relevant scientific literature into practical advice for older people in order to reduce health risk during episodes of severe winter weather; and (b) to integrate this advice with a severe winter weather ‘Early Warning System’ developed by the UK Met Office. An advice booklet was generated through a sequential process of systematic review, consensus development, and focus group discussions with older people. In a subsequent field trial, a combination of the Met Office ‘Early Warning System’ and the advice booklet produced behavioural change among older people consistent with risk reduction. The results also show that long-held convictions about ‘healthy environments’ and anxieties about fuel costs are barriers to risk reduction.

Dependent older people are predominantly cared for by family members, mostly partners and children, but not every parent in need is cared for by a child, and intergenerational care varies widely across Europe. Previous studies have used care regimes to explain these differences, but because of the lack of large comparative surveys, the prevalence of intergenerational care has rarely been related directly to the institutional and cultural context, including state care provision, legal obligations between family members, and societal opinion about the role of the state in elderly care. This paper reports an analysis of variations in intergenerational care among European countries and the reasons for these differences using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Results from logistic multilevel models show that care by children is influenced by the individual characteristics of both parents and children, and by family structures, welfare-state institutions and cultural norms. Intergenerational care is more prevalent in southern and central European countries, where children are legally obligated to support parents in need, and care is perceived as a responsibility of the family, whereas in northern Europe, the wider availability of formal care services enable adult children, particularly daughters, have more choice about their activities and use of time.

Psychological distress in cancer patients is inversely related to age, although the reasons are unclear. The adult development literature suggests that ageing may be associated with the development of adaptive capacities, specifically greater attachment security (the sense that others will be available and supportive when needed) and spirituality (the capacity to view one's life as having meaning, purpose and value), that enable older people to cope better with disease. We examined whether age-related patterns in attachment security and spiritual wellbeing account for the protective effect of age against distress. Measures of depression, attachment security, spiritual wellbeing and disease burden were collected from 342 patients aged from 21 to 88 years with advanced, metastatic cancer. Attachment security and spiritual wellbeing were tested as mediators of the effect of age on depression, controlling for disease burden. It was found that age was associated inversely with depression and positively with spiritual wellbeing and attachment security. Depression was inversely related to attachment security and spiritual wellbeing, and the effect of age on depression was fully mediated by attachment security and spiritual wellbeing. The relative protection from psychological distress among older cancer patients may be the result of age-related developmental accomplishments and/or differences in the response to adverse life-events.

Although a variety of research projects have been conducted on the benefits of religious coping in older adults, no direct comparison between atheism and religious faith has been published. The study reported in this paper tackled this issue by interviewing two matched groups of people aged over 60 years living in southern England, one of 11 informants with strong atheistic beliefs, and the other of eight informants with strong religious beliefs. Five paired comparisons were undertaken to examine the role of the content of the belief system itself in coping with different negative stresses and losses commonly associated with ageing and old age. The pairs were matched for the nature of the loss or stress that the two people had experienced, but the two individuals had opposed atheistic and religious beliefs. The analyses showed that all the study participants – regardless of their beliefs – were coping well, and suggested that a strong atheistic belief system can fulfil the same role as a strong religious belief system in providing support, explanation, consolation and inspiration. It is postulated that the strength of people's beliefs and how those beliefs are used might have more influence on the efficacy of coping than the specific nature of the beliefs. Further research into the strength of belief systems, including atheism, is required to test and elaborate this hypothesis.