November 2022

Older Persons’ Rights to Social Security

By Alan Gutterman Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “[e]veryone, as a member of society, has the right to social security”, and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”) calls on States to “recognize the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance”. In its General Comment No. 19 on the right to social security released in 2008, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“CESCR”) explained...

October 2022

Family Caregiving in Diverse Communities – Addressing the needs of diverse family caregivers for older adults

By Diverse Elder Coalition & National Alliance for Caregiving WHO WE ARE This report is the product of a series of activities conducted by the Diverse Elders Coalition and its member organizations, and in partnership with the National Alliance for Caregiving, to better understand and highlight the lived experiences of diverse family caregivers for older adults. Founded in 2010, the Diverse Elders Coalition (DEC) advocates for policies and programs that improve aging in our communities as racially and ethnically diverse people;...

Long-term care equality index 2021

By SAGE Try as we might, we may never fully process and adequately convey what we, people working in long-term care communities and hospitals, have experienced during these past fifteen months. But just like the virus which we cannot see but has nonetheless turned our world upside down, even though we cannot see what has happened to us and others from within, we carry our experiences, and their effects on us, in our heart, mind, body, and spirit. In the...

Intergenerational Solidarity

By Alan Gutterman Aging is a natural progression of the life cycle and society will always have persons of different ages who need to learn to live alongside one another. One of the most consistent themes in the debate regarding the realization of the human rights of older persons is the need to strengthen “intergenerational solidarity” between and among all levels of families, communities and nations in order to achieve social cohesion and a society for all ages and build...

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The inclusion and use of data on older people in the humanitarian programme cycle

By HelpAge International Humanitarian principles and basic human rights afford everyone the right to safe and dignified access to assistance and protection on an equal basis. Older people are among those most at risk in humanitarian crises, yet older people’s rights are frequently denied, and they receive little targeted attention from governments, donors, or humanitarian agencies. HelpAge International’s 2018 study, ‘If not now, when?’, highlights significant failings in how the humanitarian system includes older people when responding to crises. A...

Older Workers’ Employment and Social Security Spillovers through the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Gopi Shah Goda, Emilie Jackson, Lauren Hersch Nicholas & Sarah Stith The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among US workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in...

September 2022

Depression and Loneliness Among the Elderly Poor

By Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Erin Grela, Madeline McKelway, Frank Schilbach, Garima Sharma & Girija Vaidyanathan The mental health of the elderly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a largely neglected subject, both by policy and research. We combine data from the health and retirement family of surveys in seven LMICs (plus the US) to document that depressive symptoms among those aged 55 and above are more prevalent in those countries and increase sharply with age. Depressive symptoms in...

The Impact of Health on Wealth: Empirical Evidence

By Umesh Ghimire This paper empirically evaluates the impact of health on wealth among adults between the ages of 50 and 100 in the United States. Using the frailty index to measure health status and carefully accounting for the dynamic relationship between frailty and wealth, I find that suffering one more health deficit leads, on average, to approximately 2.23 percent decline in the net worth of American households. The impact is concentrated among individuals over the age of 70, in...

Homeownership and the Perception of Material Security in Old Age

By Claudius Garten, Michal Myck, Monika Oczkowska Homeownership has been shown to be related to various aspects of well-being, although both the causal nature of this relationship and the possible channels behind it have been difficult to identify. We focus on one of the most often quoted mechanisms which could be responsible for the positive effects of homeownership, namely its role in providing material security in old age. Using data from 15 European countries collected in wave 2 of the...

August 2022

The Health and Retirement Study. Aging in the 21st Century. Challenges and Opportunities for Americans

By Survey Research Center. Institute for Social Research University of Michigan Published in 2006, the first HRS data book sought to introduce the world to the HRS by describing the study’s innovative design and content and providing some early findings within the main content areas of health, work and retirement, income and wealth, and family connections. In the decade since, the HRS has built on its foundation of innovation, pioneering in new directions and increasing the data’s value and relevance. The...