School business officials kept a close watch on the financial markets this week--and on district investment portfolios and teacher-retirement funds--as stock prices gyrated and once-sound institutions got government bailouts or crumbled into bankruptcy. While financial observers said it was too soon to predict how Wall Street's upheaval might…

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of Piano Wizard(TM) as a viable technological and instructional tool for older adults. Piano Wizard's applicability for seniors was determined by participants' musical skill development, perceptions of personal fulfillment, attitudes toward music learning, and opinions about the…

The Chinese government conducted its first time use survey of the activities of Chinese individuals in 2008. Activities were classified into three broad types, maintenance activities, subsistence activities and leisure activities. Time use patterns were defined by an individuals' time spent on maintenance, subsistence and leisure activities each…

Many people are ambivalent about retirement. The authors begins this article with a set of bullets describing several reasons for retiring. They then offer ten suggestions for retirees that may help them not only with navigating through the retirement process but also with adjusting to their new position and status. The authors then conclude with…

The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort could pose dramatic challenges for the U.S. labor force for at least two reasons. First, the boomers--adults born between 1946 and 1964--are large in number. Second, boomers are relatively well educated. In this report we develop and analyze occupational and labor force projections to the year 2018,…

Delay discounting occurs when an individual prefers a lesser amount of an outcome that is available immediately, rather than waiting for the full amount. The present study was a preliminary investigation into delay discounting in a yet unstudied population, American Indians (AIs). AI college students completed a delay-discounting task that…

Purpose: Minority oversamples of African Americans and Hispanics have been a key feature of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) design from its origins in 1992. The objective of this article was to assess the quality of the HRS with respect to the recruitment and retention of minority respondents. Design and Methods: To evaluate minority…

After years of non-stop increases--national k-12 per-pupil spending is up by "one-third" in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1995--schools now face the near-certainty of repeated annual budget cuts for the first time since the Great Depression. In some states and districts, reductions will be dramatic--well into the double digits. And…

This phenomenological research study explored the perceptions and lived experiences of African-American male teachers related to the underrepresentation of African-American males in the teaching profession. The study was guided by four research questions. The data was collected from 15 African-American male teachers at the elementary school level,…

This study developed and tested a model to identify the predictors of retirement planning based on an extension of the theory of planned behavior ([TPB], Ajzen, 1991) that included individual differences in proactivity and time discounting. The results showed that personal attitudes, sense of control, social influence, and stable traits have a…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the effects of two work related identification (occupational and organizational) of school teachers on intention to early retirement (withdrawal) and satisfaction with the occupation and satisfaction with the school. It also seeks the influence of perceived external prestige on withdrawal and satisfaction.…

Using the concept of "retirement congruency" (RC), which takes into account greater variation in retirement decisions (low, moderate, or high RC) than a dichotomous conceptualization (forced versus chosen), multinomial logistic regression was conducted on a sample of caregivers from the 2002 Canadian General Social Survey who were…

This report is part of a series of reports that provides information on the structure, function, finances, taxation, employment, and pension systems of the United States' approximately 90,000 state and local governments. This report presents data on state and local government employment and payroll based on information collected by the 2013 Annual…

There is a large and robust correlation between adult health and education, part of which likely reflects causality running from education into health. Less clear is whether education obtained later in life is as valuable for health as are earlier years of schooling, or whether education raises health directly or through income or wealth. In this…

This study explores the differences among California's counties and regions in their needs for new school-site administrators in the coming decade, as driven by a combination of projected administrator retirements and projected student enrollment changes. The projected need for new school-site administrators, based solely on these combined…