TY - JOUR T1 - Age and Cohort Trends in Formal Volunteering and Informal Helping in Later Life: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study. JF - Demography Y1 - 2023 A1 - Han, Sae Hwang A1 - Shih, Yao-Chi A1 - Burr, Jeffrey A A1 - Peng, Changmin KW - Bayes Theorem KW - Retirement KW - Volunteers AB -

Formal volunteering holds great importance for the recipients of volunteer services, individuals who volunteer, and the wider society. However, how much recent birth cohorts volunteer in middle and late adulthood compared with earlier birth cohorts is not well understood. Even less well-known are the age and cohort trends in informal helping provided to friends and neighbors in later adulthood. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimated age and cohort trends in formal volunteering and informal helping from 1998 to 2018 for a wide range of birth cohorts born between 1909 and 1958. We used multivariate, multilevel models based on Bayesian generalized modeling methods to estimate the probabilities of volunteering and informal helping simultaneously in a single model. Despite having advantages in human and health capital, recent birth cohorts showed volunteering levels in late adulthood that are similar to those of their predecessors. Moreover, more recent birth cohorts were consistently less engaged in informal helping than earlier birth cohorts throughout the observation period. More research is needed to illuminate the sociocultural drivers of changes in helping behaviors and overall prosocial and civic engagement.

VL - 60 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Are Spouses' Sleep Problems a Mechanism Through Which Health is Compromised? Evidence Regarding Insomnia and Heart Disease. JF - Annals of Behavioral Medicine Y1 - 2019 A1 - Shih, Yao-Chi A1 - Sae Hwang Han A1 - Jeffrey A Burr KW - Depressive symptoms KW - Heart disease KW - Marriage KW - Sleep AB -

Background: Symptoms of insomnia have been widely identified as risk factors for health, including heart disease. Despite the expansive and growing literature on health concordance among coupled individuals, few studies have examined insomnia as a shared risk factor for heart disease among middle-aged and older couples.

Purpose: This study examined the association between insomnia and incident heart disease among couples. A dyadic modeling approach was employed to investigate the relationships between one's own insomnia and partners' insomnia for the risk of incident heart disease for each partner.

Methods: Data from the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Health and Retirement Study were utilized in a prospective research design (N = 3,221 couples). Actor-partner interdependence models were employed to estimate actor and partner effects of insomnia symptoms for incident heart disease over the 4 year observation period.

Results: Insomnia symptoms measured at baseline were related to an increased risk for heart disease for husbands, whereas for wives the association was attenuated after other health measures were controlled. Wives' insomnia was related to an increased risk of incident heart disease for husbands but husbands' insomnia was not related to wives' risk of heart disease.

Conclusions: This study showed how subjective insomnia symptoms among middle-aged and older adults in intimate partnerships are associated with their heart disease risk. Further research is needed to verify the results with objective measures of sleep problems and heart disease.

VL - 53 IS - 4 U1 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29947733?dopt=Abstract ER - TY - THES T1 - Living alone and subsequent living arrangement transitions among older Americans T2 - Gerontology Y1 - 2016 A1 - Shih, Yao-Chi KW - Adult children KW - Living arrangements KW - Older Adults AB - Past research often considers living alone as a risk factor for older persons. In fact, adverse health outcomes are associated with living arrangement transitions, suggesting a need to consider the dynamic process of living arrangements. Using eight waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1998–2012), this study examines three research questions: (1) Do older Americans’ living arrangements exhibit a pattern of sequence? (2) What are implications of living arrangements at particular older ages on life expectancy? (3) What factors predict transitions out of a living alone arrangement? The first analysis displays and classifies ordered patterns of living arrangements over time. Baseline living arrangements have a substantial influence on subsequent transitions. Major patterns of women’s living arrangement sequences are more diverse than those for men. In particular, living alone is both the major living arrangements at baseline or intermediately after baseline. These results suggest the importance of the living arrangement status at old ages in relation to subsequent living arrangements over time. Next, multistate life tables are estimated for calculating life expectancy in total and among distinct living arrangements. While the expected percentage of time spent living alone for men increases with age, about half of women’s total life expectancy at any ages is spent living alone. Older persons living alone do not have shorter life expectancies than those in co-residential living arrangements, particularly among women. This suggests a selection process in which less robust older persons tend to transition to other living arrangements or die at younger ages. Lastly, discrete-time event history models are used to examine factors associated with transitioning from living alone. Sentinel health events and poorer functional status are associated with an increased risk of death, and, to a lesser extent, a subsequent transition to co-residence or institutionalization. Analyses of transitions from living alone measured concurrently with changes in functional status suggest that many transitions may be immediate reactions to a recent health decline rather than adjustments following a progressive health decline. In either case, subsequent co-residence does not appear to be a common adaptation for many older adults who live alone with increased needs for care. JF - Gerontology PB - University of Massachusetts Boston CY - Boston VL - Ph.D. SN - 9781339797564 UR - http://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1804048288?accountid=14667 ER -