A Life of Leisure? Investigating the Differential Impact of Retirement on Leisure Activity.

OBJECTIVES: Remaining active in older adulthood is widely endorsed by governments and policy-makers as a way of promoting public health and curbing welfare spending. Despite links between greater leisure activity in older adulthood and better health, cognitive function, and subjective well-being, there is a dearth of research investigating the impact of retirement on leisure activity engagement. Therefore, the primary goal of this study is to address this knowledge gap and investigate the impact of retirement on leisure activity engagement. METHODS: Using panel data from 2 waves of a large-scale longitudinal survey of Dutch older workers (N = 4,927), we investigated the impact of retirement on hours spent engaging in physical, social, and self-development activities. We further investigated the differential impact of retirement on leisure activity in retirement based on various sociodemographic characteristics. RESULTS: Although leisure activity increased across all 3 activity domains, conditional change ordinal least square regression models revealed that retirement resulted in significantly greater increases in activity relative to nonretirees. Additional analyses including interaction terms revealed that the impact of retirement on self-development and social activity differed significantly based on gender and education. DISCUSSION: Our study demonstrates that while time in leisure activity largely increases in response to retirement the nature and magnitude of the impact of retirement on leisure activity is not uniform. From a policy perspective, findings that certain groups, namely men and lower--educated individuals, may be at greater risk of lower activity levels may help guide interventions promoting active aging and retirement.

Children of the Revolution: The Impact of 1960s and 1970s Cultural Identification on Baby Boomers' Views on Retirement.

There is widespread speculation that baby boomers will make significant changes to the retirement landscape. Some attribute these changes, at least in part, to countercultural movements this generation pioneered during the sixties and seventies. However, empirical investigation into the long-term impact of countercultural identification in youth is scarce. To address this, our study examines associations between baby boomers' retirement views and identification with counterculture. Using data from 6024 pre-retired Dutch older workers, we investigate whether greater identification with counterculture is associated with more active retirement views. Our results show that greater identification with counterculture is associated with more active retirement views, even when controlling for potential confounders. Beyond highlighting the diversity of the baby boom generation, these findings support the idea that (counter)cultural identity in youth has an impact across the life course and may therefore have implications for other key questions of life's third age beyond retirement.

Vascular risk factors in older patients with depression: outcome of electroconvulsive therapy versus medication.

OBJECTIVE: Research suggests that in depression, vascular burden predicts a lower efficacy for medication (MED) and a more favourable outcome for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Therefore, we investigated the influence of the following vascular risk factors (VRF): hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, smoking, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and cerebral vascular accident/transient ischemic attack, on remission from major depression after ECT versus MED. METHODS: The study sample consisted of 81 inpatients with a DSM-IV unipolar major depression diagnosis (mean age 72.2 years, SD = 7.6, mean Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale score 32.9, SD = 6.2) participating in a randomized controlled trial comparing nortriptyline versus venlafaxine and 43 inpatients (mean age 73.7 years, SD = 7.5, mean Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale score 30.6, SD = 7.1) from an randomized controlled trial comparing brief pulse versus ultrabrief pulse ECT. The presence of VRF was established from the medical records. The remission rate of patients with VRF was compared with those of patients without VRF. RESULTS: The remission rate was 58% (19/33) in the ECT group with ≥1 VRF and 32% (23/73) in the MED group with ≥1 VRF (χ2  = 6.456, p = 0.011). Comparing patients with no VRF versus ≥1 VRF, the remission rate decreased from 80 to 58% (χ2  = 1.652, p = 0.276) in ECT patients and from 38 to 32% (χ2  = 0.119, p = 0.707) in MED patients. Applying different cut-offs for the number of VRFs yielded the same trends. Logistic regression revealed no interaction between VRF and treatment condition. CONCLUSION: The superior efficacy of ECT over pharmacotherapy in major depression in older age was independent of the presence of VRF. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.