The diversity of interest in later-life entrepreneurship: Results from a nationally representative survey of Americans aged 50 to 70

Association of Low Hourly Wages in Middle Age With Faster Memory Decline in Older Age: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study

Little research has investigated the long-term relationship between low wages and memory decline, despite the growing share of low-wage workers in the US labor market. Here, we examined whether cumulative exposure to low wages over 12 years in midlife is associated with memory decline in later life. Using 1992-2016 data from the Health and Retirement Study, we analyzed data from 2,879 individuals born in 1936-1941 using confounder-adjusted linear mixed-effects models. Low-wage work was defined as an hourly wage lower than two-thirds of the federal median wage for the corresponding year and was categorized into "never," "intermittent," and "sustained" based on wages earned from 1992 to 2004. Memory function was measured at each study visit from 2004 to 2016 via a memory composite score. The confounder-adjusted annual rate of memory decline among "never" low-wage earners was -0.12 standard units (95% confidence interval: -0.13, -0.10). Compared with this, memory decline among workers with sustained earning of low midlife wages was significantly faster (βtime×sustained = -0.014, 95% confidence interval: -0.02, -0.01), corresponding to an annual rate of -0.13 standard units for this group. Sustained low-wage earning in midlife was significantly associated with a downward trajectory of memory performance in older age. Enhancing social policies to protect low-wage workers may be especially beneficial for their cognitive health.

The influence of entrepreneur’s innovation and entrepreneurship on modern art teaching model

It is necessary to explore the significance of innovation and entrepreneurship to Chinese art education. The organization and operation mechanism of innovation and entrepreneurship education (IEE) is studied according to the current situation of IEE in Chinese art colleges and universities. The IEE system of art colleges and universities is optimized, and a new teaching model of IEE with the characteristics is explored. In addition, the research methods are theoretical analysis, comparative analysis, and empirical analysis. The objects are students from some domestic art academies. The influence of innovation and entrepreneurship on the modern art teaching model is explored. It mainly investigates the awareness and needs of college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship, the professional knowledge of students participating in related activities, the transformation of achievements, and the system and management of IEE. Based on this, a new teaching model of innovation and entrepreneurship is proposed. The six dimensions of creativity, initiative, interest, ideation, independence, and concentration of students in this model are evaluated. The results show that the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship has a significant role in improving the contemporary art education model on these six dimensions. It is found that this spirit is vital for the development of contemporary art education. In art education, the application of entrepreneurship improves students’ thinking and practical ability. And this spirit is an important part of the construction of contemporary art education.

Generativity and Gendered Pathways to Health: The Role of Human, Social, and Financial Capital Past Mid-Life

Generativity has recently received increasing attention as a key contributor to healthy aging. Personal resources and social expectations are shown to influence the desire to be generative and that generativity affects later-life health. However, whether generativity has a mediating role in linking its driving factors and health, and how gender may affect these pathways, is underexplored. Cross-sectional online data from 1085 Hong Kong residents aged 45+ were collected between November and December 2020. Latent variable path analysis was used to examine the mediating effect of generativity between human, social, and financial capital, and physical and mental well-being. Gendered pathways were investigated using multi-group analysis. Results showed that human, social, and financial capital contributed to better health through generativity, and gendered pathways were observed. Human capital had a stronger effect on generativity for men, but for women, social capital was vital for increased generativity and consequently improved health. Findings suggested that health benefits of generativity depend on different capital drivers and differ by gender. Implications for program development that aim to facilitate health should include generativity components that maximize physical and psychosocial engagement so that individuals can reap the health benefits through contributions to others.

Evaluating the relationship between social media use frequency and entrepreneurial perceptions and attitudes among students

Despite studies published in the last decade linking entrepreneurship and the use of social media, to date, no study has analyzed in depth the relationship between the frequency of use among different social media sites and the intensity of entrepreneurial attitudes and perceptions. Due to the increasing use of social media as a teaching tool in higher education, this study seeks to address this knowledge gap. Consequently, the objective of this research is to analyze whether the frequency of social media use, among Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube, is linked with perceptual discrepancies regarding entrepreneurial subjective norms, attitudes toward entrepreneurship and the intention to undertake, differentiating this relationship by gender and age group. A total of 246 business and engineering students from Chile were evaluated through online surveys, and Mann–Whitney and Spearman's correlation tests were performed. The findings highlight that higher exposure on these social media platforms is related to better entrepreneurial attitudes and perceptions, and this association differs according to students' gender and age group; in particular, Facebook shows more positive correlations in younger and male students, and WhatsApp and YouTube show more positive correlations in older and female students. This research extends the understanding of the relation between exposure to social media and variables with a considerable influence on undertaking entrepreneurship. Universities should integrate social media use as a teaching tool among students to aid in their entrepreneurial learning and strengthen new ventures. The main limitation of the study is that the sample includes business and engineering students in Chile. Future studies should ask students from different countries; likewise, it is important to use qualitative methodologies to determine why social media may affect entrepreneurial perceptions and attitudes.

Entrepreneurial tendency across the adult lifespan

This study examines whether age associates with entrepreneurship tendencies across the lifespan, after taking into account aspects of personality that affect entrepreneurship. Participants (N = 963) aged 18–81, including 200 actual entrepreneurs, completed questionnaires about entrepreneurship tendency, personality traits, and attachment orientations. Results show that age is associated with a reduced tendency to engage in entrepreneurial activity. However, this decline is quite limited, it weakens with age, and is absent after age 50. In addition, the negative association of age with entrepreneurial tendency is smaller in participants with above-median entrepreneurship tendency scores relative to those with below-median scores, and it disappears in actual entrepreneurs. Furthermore, most of the traits that have been previously associated with entrepreneurial tendencies, especially Openness to Experience and Extraversion, remain unchanged with age, accounting for the stability of entrepreneurial tendency over time. The results have implications for policy makers who wish to encourage older adults to engage in entrepreneurial activity.

How Self-Employed Older Adults Differ by Age: Evidence and Implications From the Health and Retirement Study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

There has been increased attention in recent years on self-employment in later life, with about 1 in 5 workers past of the age of 50 working for themselves. This study aims to build upon previous documentation of the characteristics of self-employed older adults by estimating how these characteristics vary by age.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Using 7 waves of the Health and Retirement Study with a sample of more than 16,000 working older adults, this study considers how the association between self-employment and sociodemographic characteristics; indicators of human, social, and financial capital; and risk tolerance differ between adults aged 50-61 and 62 years and older. Binary logistic regression and seemingly unrelated estimation are used to estimate and compare the characteristics by age group.

RESULTS

Compared to wage-and-salary work and controlling for all other factors in the models, the oldest self-employed group was more likely to identify as Black, report lower health, and receive health insurance from several sources than the younger group. Further, the older group reported lower individual earnings from work yet higher total household income (less individual earnings) and was also less likely to formally volunteer at the highest commitment levels.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

With some exceptions, these results indicate that the diversity of self-employed older adults within traditional retirement age is greater than among those before this age. Implications regarding how access to key safety net programs, such as Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare, may lead to this finding are discussed.

Older Workers in the Time of COVID-19: The Senior Community Service Employment Program and Implications for Social Work

It has long been the goal of many gerontological social work scholars to increase the ability and opportunity for people to be engaged in paid and unpaid work throughout the life course. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing and exacerbating the financial insecurity of many older adults. In this paper, we review information related to older workers and how they might be affected by this pandemic and its aftermath, paying particular attention to the most socioeconomically and physically vulnerable older workers. We also offer first-hand experiences from our careers working with and conducting scholarship on older workers, paying particular attention to recent actions by many in the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) network to provide paid sick leave to its low-income, older adult participants. We conclude with implications for social work scholarship and teaching, noting the uptick in technology use among older adults and the disparities that remain, as well as teaching that integrates discussions on the lifelong and cumulative effects of inequalities and marginalization and the need for additional researcher, student, and community collaborations.

The Systematic Impact of Personal Characteristics on Entrepreneurial Intentions of Engineering Students

The impact of personal characteristics on entrepreneurial intention is a classic topic in the field of entrepreneurship research. Previous research mostly used simple linear models, leading to a gap in the study on the interrelationship among personal characteristics and their systematic influence on entrepreneurial intention. This study investigates the interrelationship among the four specific entrepreneurial characteristics (i.e., need for achievement, locus of control, risk-taking propensity, and creativity) and their systematic influence on the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students. The research data is from 210 engineering students via a survey. Logistic regression and path analysis were used for data analysis. The findings suggest that creativity and risk-taking directly influence entrepreneurial intention while the need for achievement and the locus of control influence it indirectly. Implications for entrepreneurship education are finally discussed.