Adult education may keep older workers productive if they voluntarily engage in learning. Examining a generous partial retirement reform in Germany that encouraged early retirement among male workers, we estimate voluntary adult education activities for early retirees. Using county-level administrative data on all public adult education centers…

The rapid development of digital technologies and their increasing application in many areas of everyday life challenge all citizens to continuously learn digital skills. This also applies to older adults, among whom digital literacy is on average less well-developed than among younger adults. This article investigates why retired older adults…

Purpose: To explore employment as a social determinant of health through examining the relationship between employment status and mental health. Method: The authors conducted a systematic review of 48 longitudinal studies conducted in Australia, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, and United States…

How do social policies shape life courses, and which consequences do different life course patterns hold for individuals? This article engages the example of retirement in Germany and Britain to analyze life course patterns and their consequences for income inequality. Sequence analysis is used to measure retirement trajectories. The liberal…

This study investigated age differences in longitudinal effects of volunteering on three facets of subjective well-being (SWB), i.e. positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), and life satisfaction (LS). Both direct and indirect effects with self-efficacy as mediator were tested. Longitudinal structural equation modeling was used on 5,564…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

This study focuses on aspects of the Changing Academic Profession survey of 2007-08 that describe the place of faculty in their institutions. The authors examine the following aspects of institutional life: (1) the faculty role in institutional governance; (2) who evaluates their teaching and research; (3) the locus of their loyalties as between…

Introducing findings from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this research complements the large number of recent U.S. studies on the role of grandparents in caring for their grandchildren. For 10 continental European countries, the authors investigate cross-national variations in grandparent-provided child care…

This group of articles discusses a variety of studies related to social security and retirement benefits. These studies are related to both developing and developed nations and are also concerned with studying work conditions and government role in administering a democratic social security system. (SSH)

From 1965 to 1995, the United States, Germany, Japan, and Sweden all experienced a decline in the average age at which workers retire and an increase in the duration of retirement. Sweden and Germany particularly face elder dependency burdens, which may increase in the United States in the coming decade. (JOW)

Life expectancies are rising all over the world, leading to higher proportions of older adults in the population. This is especially true in Japan and Germany. In Germany today, "old" no longer means necessarily "poor and frail." Through volunteer work, lifelong learning, study tours, and participation in sports, older Germans…