Research on Aging

This study examines differences between Blacks and Whites in the effect of widowhood on depressive symptoms and anxiety; in grief symptoms six months after spousal loss; and the extent to which these differences are explained by marital quality, social support from children and friends, and religiosity. Analyses are based on the Changing Lives of Older Couples, a prospective study of 1,532 married individuals aged 65 and older. Widowhood is associated with elevated anxiety and depressive symptoms, yet these effects do not differ by race. Among widowed persons only, Blacks and Whites report similar levels of overall grief, yearning, intrusive thoughts, shock, depressive symptoms, and anxiety, whereas Blacks report significantly lower levels of anger and despair. The racial gap in anger is explained by Blacks’higher levels of religious participation and social support from children, whereas the difference in despair reflects Blacks’ higher levels of preloss marital conflict.

Are family experiences early in life related to patterns of adjustment and functioning in later life? This study builds on past research with the decades-spanning Terman sample of talented children to explore this basic question. Multinomial logistic models identified three family experiences in childhood and adolescence—socio-economic status of the family of origin, early parental divorce, parent-child attachment—that predicted membership in holistic profiles of aging in the later years, as generated by cluster analysis of five social psychological factors. These associations from early to later life reflected both mediational pathways (adult experiences and current circumstances explained the observed influence of early experiences) and supplemental pathways (the significance of experiences in each stage were independent of each other).

Most studies of social relationships in later life focus on the amount of social contact, not on individuals’perceptions of social isolation. However, loneliness is likely to be an important aspect of aging. A major limiting factor in studying loneliness has been the lack of a measure suitable for large-scale social surveys. This article describes a short loneliness scale developed specifically for use on a telephone survey. The scale has three items and a simplified set of response categories but appears to measure overall loneliness quite well. The authors also document the relationship between loneliness and several commonly used measures of objective social isolation. As expected, they find that objective and subjective isolation are related. However, the relationship is relatively modest, indicating that the quantitative and qualitative aspects of social relationships are distinct. This result suggests the importance of studying both dimensions of social relationships in the aging process.

The objective was to examine psychological and economic variables as differential mediators of the relationship of education to fatigue-related aspects of health. A probability sample of 1,175 older adults (aged 55+) were interviewed three times at 6-month intervals. Multiple regression was used to estimate mediation effects. The psychological measures had relatively stronger mediating effects on high fatigue symptoms than on low fatigue symptoms and had stronger effects on high fatigue than did economic mediators. Education contributions to fatigue appear to operate through both economic and psychological resources. Calmness (“peace of mind”) showed particular promise as a mediator. Positive psychological states appeared to have mediating effects independent of the effects of negative states. Findings suggest that different types of mediators may have differential effects for different aspects of health.