Modeling Job-demand Conditional Dynamics in Physical and Cognitive Functioning on Changes in Older Workers' Wellbeing over Time

Workforce aging presents organizations and researchers with the possibility that older workers will eventually retire, taking with them their accumulated skills and industry knowledge. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that promote the working individual’s wellbeing across the lifespan to maintain their employability. Part of these efforts is the study of successful aging at work, which can be generally understood as achieving and maintaining positive outcomes across one’s work lifespan. Successful aging theories emphasize the importance of understanding the person and contextual factors that influence wellbeing across the lifespan. Indeed, person factors such as health and fluid intelligence both indicate decrements in older individuals that likely result in decreases in wellbeing over time. The Job-Demands Resources (JD-R) model provides insight into how contextual, work-related factors like levels of job demands are also likely to have a negative, main effect on wellbeing over time. Moreover, older workers likely differ in the extent to which changes in health and cognition impact wellbeing, and job demands likely serve as a moderator of these relationships. The current study draws from the JD-R model and lifespan theories to understand the extent to which job demands exacerbate the effects that changes in health and fluid intelligence have on changes in wellbeing in a sample of older workers from the Health and Retirement Study.