This dissertation consists of three chapters that study issues related to unemployment and retirement decisions of workers.The first chapter examines the impact of additional pension benefits on the retirement timing of low-income female workers in Germany. Using administrative pension insurance records from Germany, it studies the impact of a pension subsidy program on retirement decisions of recipients. The kinked schedule of the policy allows me to identify the causal effect using a regression kink design. The estimation suggests that 100 euros in additional monthly pension benefits induce female recipients to claim pensions earlier by about 10 months. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the ratio of the behavioral cost to the mechanical cost of this subsidy program is 0.3, which is smaller than that of other anti-poverty programs. The second chapter studies the total labor supply effects of Unemployment Insurance (UI) for older workers --- both at the extensive and the intensive margin. It documents sharp bunchings in UI inflows at age discontinuities created by UI eligibility for workers in their 50s. Using a combination of regression discontinuity designs and bunching techniques, we quantify the magnitude of these responses exploiting a variety of thresholds, kinks, and notches induced by the UI and retirement institutions. We estimate the total effect using a dynamic life-cycle structural model. Results suggest that the impact of UI extension on non-employment durations for older workers is almost twice as large as the impact for younger workers. The third chapter examines the impact of receiving written advance notification of layoff on the labor supply of displaced workers by exploring the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The California WARN Act, implemented in 2003, expands the requirements of the federal WARN Act. It provides protection to workers in smaller firms and at smaller layoff events. Using the Displaced Worker Supplement to the Current Population Surveys from 1996 to 2018 and a differences-in-difference method, I find that the displaced workers affected by the mini WARN Acts are 3\% more likely to claim unemployment insurance. Conditional on claiming UI, they are less likely to exhaust UI.

This study used an explorative quantitative survey method for the purpose of examining bullying among older adults in retirement homes and the consequences of bullying among this population. The study also explored the type of bullying that occurs in the community. Senior community centers were the significant domains in which to research bullying among older adults because it involved immersion of the researcher into an environment of older adults who knew one another and have witnessed or have been victims of bullying in their retirement home communities. The primary purpose of this investigation was to enhance research on bullying among older adults in retirement homes. Another purpose of this research was to address the consequences of bullying in older adults and to address mental and physical consequences of bullying addressed in previous research. Currently there is not much research done on bullying among older adults. This study found that many older adults living in retirement homes are being bullied and many of them are not speaking up and isolating themselves for the purpose of avoiding their bullies. Moreover, this study shows that staff members of the retirement communities are lacking the knowledge of the bullying problem in their community. The study suggests that future studies on bullying among older adults include qualitative research to determine if older adults understand the difference of bullying and “just being grumpy” and also explore a qualitative research regarding the perpetrator of bullying and not the victims of bullying.

The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses concerning reminiscence in old age. Reminiscence has been found to be an adaptive mechanism relating to freedom from clinical depression and to a reduced discrepancy between present and past self-concepts in the face of an experimental social threat (Mc Mahon and Rhudick, 1964; Lewis, 1971). Disengagement theory (Cumming and Henry, 1961) proposes that reminiscence is adaptive because it is a defense mechanism which protects the individual from decreasing physical capacities and lack of reinforcement from society.

Recent research in gerontology and geriatrics has identified that one factor repeatedly associated with depression in the elderly is the presence of physical illness. The increasing numbers of elderly persons in the population and their high rate of chronic physical illness make it important to identify critical disease and individual characteristics that play a role in the association of depression and physical illness. In order to investigate and clarify these relationships and concerns, a panel survey of 133 middle aged and elderly persons with recent exacerbations of various physical illnesses was completed. Subjects were referred by medical offices and agencies in the Portland metropolitan area. Two in-depth interviews were completed approximately three months apart. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlational analysis, analysis of variance, multiple regression, and dynamic (change focused) correlational analysis. Results indicated a slight but consistent decrease in level of depression with increasing age. Increased levels of income, social support, religiosity, subjective health, internal locus of control for health, and life expectancy were associated with decreased levels of depression. Conversely, increased levels of pain, physical dependency, progressiveness of the disease, death anxiety, external locus of control for health, and worry about medical resources were associated with increased levels of depression. While the residential setting of urban, suburban, or rural had a significant effect on income and a slight effect on size of support system, it had no significant impact on level of depression. The four best predictors of level of depression at Time 1 were subjective health, pain, death anxiety, and income. Analysis of change over time revealed moderate stability in levels of depression. The best predictor of level of depression at Time 2 was level at Time 1. Only change in pain added significantly to the prediction of depression at Time 2. The results of this study will help to identify physically ill middle aged and elderly persons at risk for the development of depression. Analysis of change over time suggests causal relationships for further investigation.

This study explores the nature of the self-concept in old age. Specifically, the relationship between the self-concept and social relationships and self-concept and living situation (residence in a long term care or residence in one’s own home) are examined. The self-concept was measured by the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS) developed by William Fitts in 1965. Data was collected at two stages (over a two to three year period) from a study sample which consisted of twelve individuals who became institutionalized and twelve individuals who remained in their own homes. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were used. Analysis indicated that the study sample groups of institutionalized and community residing groups were similar in the amount and kind of social contacts they had with friends, family and relatives. Examination of the self-concept scores revealed that there were virtually no difference between the self-concept scores of the two samples. This study concludes with a discussion of the need to further longitudinal research into the nature of the self-concept in old age and issues in methods of data collection and analysis.

Today's methadone patients differ from those of the past due to increases in polydrug use, mental health issues, and medical needs. Patients requiring methadone treatment for their opiate addiction are now older than those who initially presented for treatment when methadone treatment first started. The number of older opiate users will continue to grow as the population continues to age. Although previous studies on opiate addiction focused on using methadone in treatment of younger adults, this study used phenomenological methodology to explore the lived experiences of opiate addicted methadone users between the ages of 50 to 55, an understudied population. A sample of 8 older addicts from the Midwest, using methadone in their treatment, provided data collected in face-to-face interviews for this study. Content analysis of the data was conducted with the assistance of NVivo 11 to code and identify categories and themes. Emergent themes included: the impact of methadone use on participants' relationship with others, participants' attitude of being an older methadone user, mental health stressors related to being an older methadone user, struggles in attending the methadone clinic daily, and needing other treatment besides treatment for methadone use. The study impacts social change by informing addiction professionals who may want to develop appropriate treatment interventions for this population.

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The abuse of older people is a largely unrecognised and under acknowledged social problem in Australia. My major objective in undertaking the work, which is represented by the original published articles that comprise the thesis, was to make a scholarly and practical contribution toward the minimisation of 'elder abuse. This objective was achieved with the development and implementation of a series of studies that articulated and ameliorated elder abuse in Australia.The thesis provides an erudite synthesis of these studies, which fall into four themes that illustrate the nature and scope of my theoretical and professional work in elder abuse. Much of the work was guided by a conceptual framework of ways of knowing in nursing, and was underpinned by the principles and practice of community development and participatory community-based action processes.The outcomes of these studies include work with three stakeholder groups: professionals who deal with elder abuse, older people who are victims or potential victims of abuse, and those who perpetrate abuse on an older person. The work, illustrated in the four themes, includesthe articulation of elder abuse issues with West Australian aged care workersthe development of elder abuse protocols, policy guidelines and ethical principles, to guide professional practice in abuse prevention and interventionthe design and implementation of participative community programs to empower older people, and their carers, to resist being abused or abusing and to assist perpetrators stop their abusethe amelioration of abuse of nursing home residents by staff.The thesis situates my conceptual and clinical effort within the wider corpus of Australian knowledge and practice on elder abuse and contributes to addressing the social problem of elder abuse within the context of Australian aged care.

This thesis addresses the hypothesis that unobtrusive monitoring of daily living could be used to evaluate changes in the health status of frail elderly people living alone at home. Low cost motion sensors can be used for monitoring the long term trends in occupant?s well-being in terms of physical, mental, social and environmental factors. The monitored data can be used to quantitatively measure parameters that can provide insight into the level of activity and functional ability of the subject. Any deviations in these parameters can provide information on the changing health status of the subject. This thesis attempts for the first time to establish a mathematical and statistical framework for the monitoring of functional health status in the home using a network of wireless sensors to monitor occupancy in each room of the house. A low power and low cost, unobtrusive occupancy monitoring system using ZigBee wireless technology and passive infrared sensors has been developed by the Biomedical Systems Laboratory at the University of New South Wales. The essence of the occupancy monitoring system is to detect variations in the activities of daily living (ADL) of elderly people living alone at home. The finite state, discrete parameter, time homogeneous Markov chain represents a theoretical framework for an unobtrusive occupancy monitoring system. An implementation of this framework for monitoring occupancy pattern is presented in real time use. The system was evaluated in a series of field studies in laboratory and home environment, in supervised and unsupervised settings, using cohorts of healthy elderly subjects living alone in their homes in community dwelling setting. A pilot trial was conducted in which four healthy elderly subjects living alone had PIR motion sensors installed in their homes at strategic points for a period of up to 13 weeks. The functionality of the system was evaluated over a domain of basic daily activities. A profile of the activities, in real time environment, for different times and days was stored as transition probability matrices. Automatic techniques for interpreting the test data captured by the system in terms of human movements were evaluated and compared with the wellness profile of the subject. Trial results exhibited that clinically significant model parameters were able to detect longitudinal deviations in the functional health status of elderly people.

In Western society competing in physically demanding sport is not considered the domain of older people. For the majority of the twentieth century older people were stereotyped as frail, socially withdrawn and dependent on health and social welfare systems. Competitive athletes on the other hand are commonly viewed as being young, strong, aggressive, physically competent and independent. Although today’s older generation are encouraged to be physically active, society does not recognise serious competition or physically intense sports as age-appropriate activities for them. If older people choose to participate in sport they are expected to be doing it to have fun, make friends and keep fit. The growing leisure phenomenon of older athletes who compete to win, achieve a personal best, break world records or push their bodies to the limit presents a challenge to these orthodoxies. The purpose of this thesis is to explain why competing in physically demanding sport is significant to some older people given the accepted view that it is not their domain. In particular, the thesis explores the multiple ways in which a group of older people negotiate conflicting discourses of both sport and ageing, as well as the contradiction between their identity as an athlete and their ageing bodies, as they talk about and experience competing in physically strenuous individual and team sports. The key themes through which this negotiation process is played out relate to friendship and fun, competition, youthfulness, and the ageing body. It is revealed that the process of competing in sport can be simultaneously empowering and problematic at both the individual and social levels. The thesis draws on insights from post-structural theories of resistance and empowerment, traditional and postmodern understandings of identity management in later life, and life-stage theories to interpret the phenomenon of older people competing in physically demanding sport. To achieve the above aims, a qualitative study exploring the experiences of a group of Masters athletes aged over 55 years who regularly compete in physically strenuous individual or team sports was undertaken. It was found that despite age-appropriate norms, competition is significant to many of the participants. Study participants embrace the ideologies and practices of competitive sport and use them to define ageing in terms of youthfulness, physical ability and personal empowerment. Simultaneously however, a denial of, or desperate resistance to, the physical ageing process accompanies this feeling of empowerment. The participants in this study were not only competing in sport, but also ‘competing for life����. It is argued that a multi-faceted and conflicting interplay of resistance and conformity, empowerment and denial, identity and the ageing body is embedded in the phenomenon of older people competing in physically demanding sport. These contradictory findings expose alternative ways of understanding sport, competition, ageing and older people in the West and raise many questions requiring further investigation. The study also points to potential applications of these findings to policy-making and provision of leisure services for older people. / PhD Doctorate