Transportation plays a vital role in meeting the daily activity needs of individuals, including older adults. One major gap in the existing ageing and mobility literature is that most studies are situated in the Global North despite Global South cities facing comparatively faster ageing. This article’s primary purpose is to examine the daily lived experiences of transportation use among older adults in Mexico City. Secondarily it explores contextual differences among individuals living in two neighbourhood types – those with high or low access to public transportation networks. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 older adults and isolated four central themes that encapsulate their experiences of transportation in Mexico City. The extensive and well-run structured-transit system in central Mexico City was the source of many positive experiences for older adults, especially regarding affordability, high network connectivity and overall sense of safety and comfort. This was true for most participants across neighbourhood types and socio-economic statuses. Conversely, in peripheral neighbourhoods dominated by less-structured transportation modes, negative experiences included complaints about vehicle drivers, crime and safety, comfort and convenience. This article’s contributions are showing (1) consistency with existing Global South literature whereby older adults tend to use public transportation more widely and hold similar complaints related to poor experiences as older adult passengers; (2) that Mexico City exemplifies older adult transportation experiences that are dramatically different from car-dependent societies in the Global North; and (3) how older adults’ experiences with public transportation can vary significantly based on residential location within the city.

The agency of a person with young onset dementia (YOD) changes owing to individual symptoms, uncertainty about the speed of progression and the severity of YOD. Dementia usually greatly interrupts life and reduces agency. Previous studies show that some people and families integrate and cope with dementia better than others. This study aimed to find out how YOD changes the agency of the person who has it and what family members’ role is in forming their agency. The data were collected in Finland in semi-structured interviews with 14 people with YOD and 15 family members, about a year after the diagnosis. These two data sets were analysed with a narrative method, actantial analysis. A wide variety of elements, both human and non-human factors, were found to promote and undermine agency. It was found that people with YOD need both integrity and flexibility to reconstruct their own agency. Resources support them in this process of reconstruction, and hinderers interrupt the process. This combination of integrity and flexibility, resources and hinderers, generates how people with YOD recount the future, the aims they set and how they reconstruct their agency. Other people, especially family members, are part of this dynamic process and when their relationship is cohesive, the agency of both parties increases. The participants used ideal and burdensome storylines to narrate factors that supported or interrupted their agency. Based on our findings, narrating one’s situation is, for coping, not only a means but its very basis.

Civic engagement is increasingly relevant for healthy and active ageing and addressing social exclusion among older people. Current research focuses primarily on formal volunteering, overlooking other ways older people contribute to their families and communities. This study addresses these gaps by recognising civic engagement as multi-dimensional – including associational engagement, informal care-giving, formal volunteering, digital engagement and formal/informal political engagement – and exploring activity combinations among older individuals. Using data from the 2016 European Quality of Life Survey (33 European countries), it examines the civic engagement of 9,031 individuals aged 65+. Descriptive analysis maps their multi-dimensional civic engagement, while latent class analysis identifies distinct engagement profiles and explores which activities are combined. It also investigates the socio-structural and social capital resources associated with each profile. Findings reveal that 32 per cent of older individuals are not engaged in civic activities. Among the civically engaged, five profiles emerge, illustrating varied engagement across multiple activities. Many older people (35.8 per cent) combine several civic activities, albeit in different combinations. Informal care-giving can be found in all profiles; and for a large part of the population, it is their only civic activity, while another profile displays older Europeans engaged in several activities simultaneously. Higher levels of socio-structural resources are associated with greater diversity in civic engagement in later life. Interventions and policies therefore must consider the diverse circumstances and preferences of older people and valorise and include all forms of multi-dimensional civic engagement, including informal care-giving, in policy making.

This study addresses a significant knowledge gap in the literature by examining the relationship between religious involvement and subjective wellbeing (SWB) among older adults in Taiwan, a cultural context that has been underrepresented in existing research, with a focus on gender and age differences. Using data collected in Taichung City in 2017 (N = 645), this study measured religious involvement through religious affiliation, religiosity and frequency of religious participation, and assessed SWB via life satisfaction and happiness. Findings revealed no significant association between religious involvement and life satisfaction. However, religious participation was positively correlated with happiness. Gender differences were observed: Buddhism and Taoism were positively associated with life satisfaction among males, whereas religiosity and religious participation were significantly related to life satisfaction and happiness among females. Age disparities were also found, with religiosity significantly relating to both life satisfaction and happiness in the old-old group (70–89 years) but not in the young-old group (60–69 years). These findings highlight the nuanced associations between religious involvement and SWB, emphasising the importance of considering gender and age variations in future research. Future studies should further explore the cultural contexts that shape these relationships and examine other potential mediating factors to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious involvement influences wellbeing across different demographic groups.

Extant literature shows that small conversations with strangers can help improve individuals’ wellbeing while reducing feelings of loneliness. Nevertheless, previous studies on talking to strangers tend to focus on young participants in controlled experimental settings, leaving a gap in understanding older adults’ experiences and their likelihood of adopting talking to strangers as part of their daily healthy ageing practices. Considering the problem of worsened social isolation and loneliness among older people during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is even more important to include them in the promotion of social inclusion through micro-conversations with strangers. To understand older adults’ attitudes and experiences of talking to strangers, this study interviewed 19 older people based on their trial of talking to strangers over a three-month period. Findings reveal that their willingness and confidence varied by age and gender, with retired individuals being more active in engaging with strangers. Time constraints and lack of self-efficacy were identified as barriers, particularly among those still working or with caregiving responsibilities. Rather than personal gains, the act of kindness towards others was emphasised as the key motive. These insights are valuable for policy makers and organisations supporting older people’s wellbeing, highlighting the potential for older individuals to serve as conversation initiators, promoting mutual kindness and wellbeing in communities.

Discourses and how they construct policy ‘problems’ delimit ‘solutions’, including the scale, shape and structure of services. This article discusses how the adult social care sector in England is presented as a policy problem, with the greater use of technology the associated ‘common-sense’ solution – both to the ‘crisis of care’ in a society with an ageing population and as a means to stimulate the national economy. It draws upon critical discourse analysis to examine English policy documents and other government texts published between 2020 and 2022. In doing so, it de-objectivises and de-universalises semiotic claims around care and technology and explores omitted alternatives. In discourse, ageing and care are framed as both problems to be solved and opportunities for entrepreneurship. Technologies are bound together with efficiency, with limited exploration of how use of the former necessarily entails the latter. Technology is, in addition, presented as agentic, inevitable and unassailable, closing off debates as to whether other, less seemingly ‘innovative’ options for reform and change could entail more favourable outcomes. Discourse thus limits the role of the state to stimulating the environment required for technological advancement.

High-quality intergenerational relationships positively influence cognitive functioning in older parents. However, there is insufficient information on how they shape the trajectories of mothers’ and fathers’ cognitive functioning decline in multi-child families, owing to the complexity of intergenerational relationships, such as multi-dimensional and ambivalent natures and differences varying across children. Drawing on three waves of data (2014, 2016 and 2018) from a nationally representative survey – the China Longitudinal Ageing Social Survey (N = 9,404) – we used the k-means clustering method to discern patterns of intergenerational relationships in multi-child Chinese families, as well as the growth curve models, to examine the associations between parent–child relationship types and the trajectories of older parents’ cognitive functioning. Five types of intergenerational relationship were identified: alienated, stressfully interacting, independent, beneficially interacting and tight-knit. We then investigated the associations between trajectories of cognitive functioning and the most distant type, the closest type, and the heterogeneity of parent–child relationships across multiple children. The most distant parent–child relationship was significantly related to cognitive functioning trajectories with the alienated (tight-knit) type associated with the lowest (highest) levels of cognitive functioning and the fastest (slowest) cognitive decline. However, the closest parent–child relationship was not significantly related to cognitive functioning trajectories. Moreover, greater variation in relationships with multiple children was correlated with lower levels of cognitive functioning and faster cognitive functioning decline. These associations were stronger among mothers than fathers. This study provides new insights into the potentially protective role of intergenerational relationships in older parents’ cognitive functioning and their gendered differences.

Despite the universal social policies of Sweden’s welfare state, recent decades have seen decreasing public benefits and increasing socio-economic disparities, affecting the financial wellbeing of older adults and their younger family members. This repeated cross-sectional study explores the development of intergenerational financial transfers in Sweden over the past two decades, examining transfers involving older parents and their children and grandchildren, and patterns related to gender and social class. It utilises data from the Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old, from 2002 to 2021, along with descriptive statistics and logistic regression models, to study shifts in donor–receiver proportions and gender/social-class disparities. The findings revealed that approximately one in four parents provided financial support to younger generations, while very few received such support. Downward financial transfers increased over time, with growing focus on grandchildren. No significant gender differences in providing were identified; however, women’s contributions increased in frequency and amount, compared to previous cohorts of women. Men’s contributions remained relatively stable over time. Parents in higher social classes were more inclined to provide financial support than parents in lower classes; this difference grew over time. Additionally, parents in higher social classes more frequently provided higher amounts than their counterparts. In conclusion, this study underscores changing gender and social-class patterns in financial contributions made by parents to their children and grandchildren in contemporary Sweden. Understanding these levels and subgroup differences is crucial for shaping policies and mitigating the potential growth of socio-economic inequality in future generations.

People living with dementia are often presumed to have no agency or capacity to act in the social world. They are often excluded from participating in research while research methodologies may not capture their embodied engagement with people and places. Yet, like everyone, people with dementia can express their agency in nuanced ways, for example, through emotions or embodied expression. In the conceptual framework discussed here, nuanced agency is conceived as consisting of non-deliberative elements (embodied, emotional, habituated, reflexive and intersubjective) and deliberative elements (choices or decisions and facilitative). Although people with dementia have been found to benefit from gardens with their sensory appeal, how they experience gardens is not well understood. This critical interpretive synthesis aims to explore how people with dementia experience nuanced forms of agency and citizenship in gardens. A conceptual framework of agency was developed to address the aim and support the analysis. Analysis of the 15 included studies highlighted the value of the conceptual framework in identifying a wider and more granular array of nuanced agency expressed in embodied form and through dialogue. This included expressions of intersubjective and facilitative agency that informed opportunities for people with dementia to experience relational citizenship socially in communal garden settings. These findings suggest an opportunity for researchers to explore the embodied agency of people living with dementia more comprehensively by applying theoretical concepts of agency. Further testing of the framework’s utility for guiding collection and analysis of primary data involving people with dementia in garden settings is recommended.