Research review: Aging out of residential care in South Africa

Approximately 21,000 children were accommodated in residential care in South Africa in 2011/2012. Despite this large number, and the state's substantial financial investment in residential care, there has, until recently, been little research on care‐leaving: the transition out of care due to reaching adulthood. Furthermore, much of the research available has not been published in international journals. This article reports on a systematic review of research on residential care‐leaving in South Africa, from 2003 to 2016. A thematic analysis of the resulting 40 research outputs maps the scope of findings from South African research, in relation to theory of leaving care, measurement tools developed, young people's experiences of leaving care, transitional outcomes, processes of leaving care, facilitators of improved outcomes, care‐leaving services, and policy on leaving care. Critical gaps in the current research opus are identified, with a view to refining future research on young people aging out of care in South Africa.     

Single women and stock investment in individual retirement accounts

This study uses data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances to investigate factors related to stock investment in individual retirement accounts and focuses on the role of gender and marital status in particular. This study finds that single women are less likely to own stocks and invest in fewer stocks in their IRAs. Personal characteristics, such as stock ownership in other financial assets, education level, and risk tolerance may play a key role in shaping individuals’ decisions regarding stock investment in IRAs. However, these determinants are different for single women than for other demographic groups.     

Working Longer May Be Good Public Policy,But It Is Not Necessarily Good for Older People

Older people are facing a changed set of expectations regarding work and retirement. Until quite recently early retirement was being encouraged. Today's older workers, however, are contemplating longer working lives amid policy concerns about the costs of social welfare associated with an aging population. While working longer is, almost universally, being promoted as a social and individual good this article argues that this policy shift is unlikely to change the situation of many older workers who would have needed to continue working anyway. It also argues that the emphasis on prolonged employment undervalues engagement in activities beyond employment. As well, it argues that the emphasis on prolonging employment neglects to account for the attendant risks for many of continuing to work or having to seek work and the potential health- and well-being-enhancing effects of retirement.     

Crafting the expert-advocate: training and recruitment efforts in the carbon dioxide capture and storage community

This article presents a case study of recruitment efforts around carbon capture and storage (CCS) to explore how expert communities internalize the societal dimensions of envisioned pathways for energy transitions. Members of the CCS community see the technology’s realization as being dependent on traversing a range of “barriers”, such as public fears and resistance that exacerbate struggles for policy support. Community-supported training venues prime recruits for practical interventions that target these barriers. Events also uphold necessary interpretive flexibilities that support heterogeneous advocacy coalition with at times diverging interests in energy transitions. The concept of expert-advocates, experts primed for interventions across technical-social systems, is proposed as a new analytic aid for future studies of socially reflexive expert communities.     

Transition to Grandparenthood and Job‐Related Attitudes: Do Grandparental Sex and Lineage Matter?

This study investigated the impact of the transition to grandparenthood on employees' psychological involvement in their job, attitude toward retirement, and retirement‐related hopes and concerns, taking into account sex and lineage. The participants were 152 maternal and paternal grandparents who were assessed at 2 time points (approximately 2 months before and 3 months after the birth of their first grandchild) and 76 control participants who completed the same assessments with an interval of 6 months. Both grandmothers and grandfathers were less involved in their job and had more family‐related hopes and fewer retirement‐related concerns about health, finances, and dependence than control participants. The analyses also revealed lineage effects: Maternal grandparents were less psychologically involved in their job and had a more positive attitude toward retirement, in particular fewer fears of uselessness and loneliness, than paternal grandparents.     

Predicting End‐of‐Career Transitions for Baby Boomers Nearing Retirement Age

Retirement has traditionally been conceptualized as a point‐in‐time decision to physically and psychologically withdraw from the workforce on reaching a certain age. However, the expectations of older workers demonstrate a new retirement paradigm, with many more retirement trajectories. The purpose of this study was to examine actual career decisions being made by older workers and to understand sociodemographic factors that might differentiate their career trajectories. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (Juster & Suzman, 1995 ) were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression to compare 4 retirement trajectories (i.e., no retirement, full retirement, bridge employment, and encore career). Gender, age, education, marital status, health, and wealth differentially predicted the odds of pursuing each of the 4 retirement decisions. Career practitioners may use these results to help baby boomers make retirement decisions and provide them with appropriate education, guidance, and resources. Additional research is needed to examine other factors salient to each of the retirement trajectories.     

I Do … Want to Save: Marriage and Retirement Savings in Young Households

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 adult households (ages 22–35; N = 3,894) from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Results reveal considerable differences by marital status. Controlling for important characteristics, young adults who were married were more likely than all other groups (including cohabitors) to perceive retirement as an important savings goal and to have an individual retirement account. Married persons were more likely than their single counterparts to participate in a defined contribution pension plan. Single women fared particularly poorly on retirement savings outcomes. A range of possible theoretical links between marriage and retirement savings at young adulthood are discussed.     

Transitions to part-time work at older ages: the case of people with disabilities in Europe

This paper analyses the labour-force transitions of older workers with disabilities in general, particularly workers’ transitions to and from part-time employment within a European context. Using the two first waves (2004 and 2007) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we compare transitions between employment statuses for disabled and non-disabled individuals, even after controlling for different disability trajectories. In addition, we employ a multivariate framework to examine the determinants for remaining in part-time work in 2007 for those individuals who were part-timers in 2004. The results show that older people with long-term disabilities have a higher probability of staying in a part-time job than their compared counterparts. Policy-makers must promote part-time employment as a means of increasing employment opportunities for older workers with disabilities and support gradual retirement opportunities with flexible and reduced working hours.     

Gender,justice and work: A distributive approach to perceptions of housework fairness

Most women and men report that the division of domestic labor in their household is fair, despite women undertaking approximately seventy percent of housework. This raises questions about how fairness is evaluated within partnerships. We explore how parenthood and relationship transitions affect perceptions of housework fairness using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel regression models. Our results indicate that net of actual housework divisions, socio-demographic factors, time availability and relative resources, the transition to parenthood increases women’s perceptions of housework fairness immediately following the birth of a child, but decreases them in the long run. Relationship transitions have no independent effects. Our findings suggest that parenthood transitions are associated with changes in women’s identity, cognitive evaluations of fairness and feelings of entitlement, as indicated by distributive justice theory.