The aim of the study is to illustrate a comprehensive approach to item bias in cross-cultural research by integrating quantitative and qualitative data in a mixed methods design. We studied responses and response processes of Dutch and Spanish participants to quality of life items from five international studies. Item bias was evaluated by…

Recent research demonstrates that personal mortality salience from annuity contemplation generates an avoidance response, reducing interest in purchasing annuities. However, theoretical models of mortality salience also predict an increased desire for investment in the future circumstances of surviving others ("symbolic immortality"),…

Most private sector employees have access to defined contribution retirement plans while public sector employees often may choose defined benefit or defined contribution plans. This research utilized a survey of faculty to analyze retirement plan satisfaction. Advice from a financial planner was positively associated with satisfaction with…

Background: Despite promotion of physical activity guidelines, less than one third of U.S. adults are sufficiently active and an even larger number of older adults fail to meet guidelines. To address this major public health issue, it is essential to broadly consider determinants of physical activity. Aims: This study explores how physical…

This investigation of proactive personality focused on life satisfaction during a 10-year period in which people went from being full-time employees to being fully retired. The study contributes at the intersection of the literatures on proactive personality, careers, retirement, and life satisfaction. In a sample of 118 recent retirees across the…

With one treated and one untreated periods, difference in differences (DD) requires the untreated response changes to be the same across the treatment and control groups, if the treatment were withheld contrary to the fact. A natural way to check the condition is to backtrack one period and examine the response changes in two pretreatment periods.…

The top ten killer diseases in Malaysia are largely associated with inactivity. In relation to that, Malaysia has come out with policies on prevention, control and management of non-communicable diseases (NCD) into the social, economic and environmental systems through various stakeholders. Thus, this study examined the level of physical activity…

Increased policy and academic attention has been placed on promoting retirement savings early in the life course. This study investigates the extent to which retirement savings behavior among young persons, a population for which retirement savings is important but typically low, differs by marital status. We draw national survey data on young…

Using the frameworks of the life course perspective and continuity theory, this study focuses on the association among working people between gender and specific leisure activities, social interests and individuals' preferred retirement age. The study is based on the first wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Aging and Generation (NorLAG) study,…

The objectives were to describe the stated motives of participants who enrolled in a program at the Open University for the Elderly (UnATI, in Portuguese), identify correlations between the stated motives and sociodemographic data, and find a set of predictors related to the listed motives. A total of 306 middle-aged and elderly adults aged 50 or…

Purpose: As part of an ongoing effort to analyze the distributional implications of potential policy reforms to the U.S. Social Security system, we consider the widely discussed reform of earnings sharing. Such an approach has been viewed as a way to "update" Social Security's family benefits based on marital status and as a means to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of background, psychological, and social variables on older adults' well-being, and how this may differ for men and women. Participants included 800 adults from the 2002 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), aged 60 to 101 years old (M = 71.22, SD = 8.46), who completed the optional positive…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

Retirement is recognized as a family experience, affecting retirees, their spouses, and their children. This study examined how the retirement transition affects the middle class, healthy, and financially secure male retiree and his wife. In-depth interviews were conducted with 92 couples from the Boston area in which the husband had been retired…

Examined the relationship between marital status and job involvement in women retired from nonprofessional careers (58 ever married women and 22 never married women). Results showed that marital status affected the form of these women's work careers but not the quality of their work role participation. (JAC)