Research

Two major themes define the Center's mission.

Age-Related Changes in Everyday Context

This theme encompasses a broad range of topics that connect physiological, psychosocial, cognitive, and sensory changes associated with the typical aging project—

• internal changes that take place at the level of individual organs (e.g., brain, eye, ear) or lower (e.g., regions of the brain), or in individual muscles or muscle groups, or bodily functions (e.g., metabolic processes)
•  to individual capacities and choices and their observable external behavioral manifestations.

The outcomes of interest include choices and behaviors such as

• strategies adopted for self-care needs such as help from other people, or use of technology or devices such as hearing aids
• choices concerning the type, frequency, and intensity of various individual and social activities (e.g., interactions with family and friends, participation in group activities, volunteer activities, exercise, leisure-time activities
• choices regarding the nature of, and interactions with, the physical environment, e.g., household composition, presence and use of assistive technology, and type of housing.

Demographic Change, Late-Life Well-Being, and Public Policy

Possibly the most salient example of demographic and economic forces presently playing out in the policy arena is the prospect that members of the so-called Baby Boom generation, whose numbers are enhanced by increasing life expectancy, will create unprecedented fiscal pressures in the form of claims on the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds as well as the Medicaid program. More generally, individual choices and behaviors in a wide range of economic and demographic domains are influenced by numerous public policy and interventions. Those choices and behaviors, in turn, themselves have implications for public health and the design and effectiveness of public policies.

The Program Development Core addresses these goals with:

Pilot Projects

The pilot projects in 2009-2010 are:

• The daily lives of older adults: Developing measures of daily cognitive function and behaviors for population-based surveys (Janet Wilmoth, investigator, with Martin Sliwinski, Penn State University). The purpose of this two-year pilot project is to develop valid measures of daily cognitive functioning and behaviors that can be used in population-based surveys. Data will be gathered from 75 older (age 60 and over) partnered households (total N=150) using a survey that employs a daily diary design. One-half of the sample will be interviewed once in person, followed by daily CAI phone interviews for six consecutive days. The other half of the sample will complete an Internet survey for seven consecutive days. The survey will include measures of cognitive functioning based on objective cognitive tests as well as self-reports of daily cognitive failures. In addition it will gather detailed information on daily behaviors that indicate social engagement, self-care and maintenance, daily stress, physical symptoms, health-related activity constraints, and mood. Both partners in the household will be surveyed to allow comparisons of self and partner reports.
• Health, disability insurance, and family structure (Perry Singleton, investigator). This research will examine the underlying mechanism for the linkage between disability onset and marital dissolution found in Singleton's earlier (2008) work. The most obvious mechanism is the loss in earnings due to disability onset. But many factors associated with disability onset may lead to marital dissolution, including unobservable characteristics such as impatience or carelessness. To test for the proposed mechanism, the research will exploit a particular policy, implemented in 1987, that dramatically increased disability benefits under the Canadian Pension Plan, which serves all Canadian citizens except those residing in Quebec. If the loss in earnings is the mechanism by which disability and divorce are correlated, then an increase in disability insurance benefits, which replace earnings in the event of a disability, should attenuate the association between disability and divorce. For several reasons, the 1987 legislation to the Canadian Pension Plan is an ideal natural experiment to examine the effect of disability insurance on divorce. First, there were no substantive changes to the Quebec Pension Plan, which serves Quebec citizens, so residents of Quebec serve as an obvious comparison group. Second, in contrast to other structural reforms of disability insurance programs, the 1987 legislation was discrete and significant, which implies that the effect of disability on divorce can be credibly identified. Third, the policy affected a large number of people, so there are adequate data sources available to construct a suitably sized sample of the population before and after the legislation was implemented. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the policy relaxed the eligibility criteria (fewer years of previous work would be required) and increased the base benefit amount (so benefits increased regardless of previous earnings history). These two policy features would have a particular affect on younger adults, when the association between disability and divorce is greatest.

Follow-up Assistance to Obtain Long-Term Funding for Pilot Projects