Unpacking intergenerational (IG) programs for policy implications: A systematic review of the literature

Intergenerational care is a program where both the younger and older generations are receiving programmed care in an environment where activities and resources are shared between them. Anecdotally, an intergenerational care program takes on many forms. This paper presents a systematic literature review of intergenerational care models. Our findings are relevant to policy makers as the paper highlights the opportunities to create an age-friendly environment by introducing intergenerational models in Australia, where intergenerational care development is in its infancy. Future research will help articulate the personal, social, and economic value of intergenerational care.     

Discrete Barker Frailty and Warped Mortality Dynamics at Older Ages

We develop a discrete variant of a general model for adult mortality influenced by the delayed impact of early conditions on adult health and mortality. The discrete variant of the model builds on an intuitively appealing interpretation of conditions that induce delayed effects and is an extension of the discrete form of the standard frailty model with distinct implications. We show that introducing delayed effects is equivalent to perturbing adult mortality patterns with a particular class of time-/age-varying frailty. We emphasize two main results. First, populations with delayed effects could experience unchanging or increasing adult mortality even when background mortality has been declining for long periods of time. Although this phenomenon also occurs in a regime with standard frailty, the distortions can be more severe under a regime with Barker frailty. As a consequence, conventional interpretations of the observed rates of adult mortality decline in societies that experience Barker frailty may be inappropriate. Second, the observed rate of senescence (slope of adult mortality rates) in populations with delayed effects could increase, decrease, or remain steady over time and across adult ages even though the rate of senescence of the background age pattern of mortality is time- and age-invariant. This second result implies that standard interpretations of empirical estimates of the slope of adult mortality rates in populations with delayed effects may be misleading because they can reflect mechanisms other than those inducing senescence as conventionally understood in the literature.     

Mindfulness-based forgiveness groups for older adults

ABSTRACT

Interventions that enable individuals to be more forgiving toward themselves and others are important for older adults. This article describes a group intervention for adults aged 60 or older that integrates forgiveness-related skills with a mindfulness approach. The Mindfulness-based Forgiveness Group was designed to meet for eight sessions. The skills taught included: recognizing one’s own expectations and unenforceable rules, broadening one’s perspectives about the context of the transgression, and discovering positive intentions through exercises as well as a variety of meditations to cultivate mindfulness, self-compassion and forgiveness. Data from five Mindfulness-Based Forgiveness Groups were collected. Based on pre- and post-test measures, analyses indicate that participants improved significantly in relation to forgiveness, mindfulness/self-compassion, and mental health. Using qualitative post-test data from participants, we identify elements of the intervention that appear to be helpful. Suggestions are provided for social workers seeking to replicate and build upon this promising intervention.     

A SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN INVENTORIES AND SALES OF MERCHANT WHOLESALERS

In this study cross-spectral methods are used to test the hypothesis that inventory investment leads sales of merchant wholesalers through the short-term, seasonal frequencies, but sales lead inventories through the long-term, cyclical frequencies. An intuitive explanation and a time-domain, generating model for the reversal phenomenon are given.     

How Do Students Evaluate Instructors’ Performance? Implication of Teaching Abilities,Physical Attractiveness and Psychological Factors

One instrument regularly seen as a basic resource in assessing pedagogical knowledge and vivid learning in different circumstances is through the method of conducting student assessment appraisal of their instructors. Nevertheless, deciding the nature of instructional abilities requires as rationale and unbiased judgments. The concern is that there are no formal techniques or formulas that would prompt accurate responses from the students. In spite of the contention surrounding students’ rating on instructors, this study aims to investigate how university students in Malaysia would evaluate instructors based on non-instructional factors, such as physical attractiveness and psychological factors, which in turn may affect students’ perceptions towards instructors’ performance. PLS-SEM was appropriated to perform the path modeling analysis. Practical implication is discussed.

     

The Real Reason 60 Is the New 30: Consumer Debt and Income Insecurity in Late Middle Age

In this analysis, we revisit the arguments made in our 2007 book, Post‐Industrial Peasants: The Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity, and foreshadow our arguments in our forthcoming book, Middle Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences and Remedies (2014, Routledge). The plight of the American middle class has been growing steadily since the early 1980s, and has been compounded further by the recession of 2008–2009 and its aftermath. We extend our prior work by examining the particular effects of long‐term middle‐class decline and the recent recession on Americans over 55 years old. Our retirement savings simulation presents in stark terms the cumulative disadvantage of working in unsteady jobs with stagnant wages over the course of a late‐20th‐ and early 21st‐century work career. In our discussion, we suggest that one cultural adaptation to the retirement savings crisis is the denial of the realities of aging and the suggestion that most age‐related problems are temporary and fixable. In short, we suspect that one reason “60 is the new 30” is because few Americans can afford to be 60.