Cessation of Care for Frail Older Adults: Physical, Psychological and Economic Outcomes for Family Carers

Life After Retirement: Exploring the Survival Strategies of SSNIT Pensioners in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana

Ghana's elderly population represents about 6.7% of the national populace. They comprise persons aged sixty years and above, including retirees. The main source of income for some of these individuals, particularly those who worked in the formal sector is the monthly pension they receive as compensation for contributing to Ghana's public pension scheme known as the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) while they were working. However, some beneficiaries of the scheme have raised concerns about the inadequacy of the pension income. Old age is accompanied by other social, economic, and health issues that tend to be detrimental to one's well-being. In this study, the survival strategies adopted by SSNIT pensioners to assuage the challenges they encounter, mainly due to inadequate pensions were explored. The mixed-methods research design was employed to gather data from 437 respondents. Whereas the quantitative findings were analyzed via the Stata software, the framework approach was adopted to analyze the qualitative data. The majority (78.7%) of the pensioners indicated that their pensions were insufficient to meet their needs. In their quest to address the challenges confronting them, the pensioners either adopted survival strategies they considered suitable or resorted to other non-prioritized coping mechanisms perceived to be relevant only in times of urgent necessity. Based on the findings of the study, some recommendations for policy and practice were presented.

Self-Rated Health and Socioeconomic Status in Old Age: The Role of Gender and the Moderating Effect of Time and Welfare Regime in Europe

Research has shown that health status and self-rated health (SRH) are correlated not only with age and gender but also with socioeconomic determinants, such as income, education, and employment status, in the course of life and in late life. Much less investigated, however, are gender differences in the association between socioeconomic factors and SRH and how the connection differs among the European welfare state regimes. This study examines the association between SRH and socioeconomic status in later life and in relation to gender and welfare state regime characteristics. Using SHARE data, it builds an analytical sample of respondents aged 60–70 (1275 men, 1544 women) who participated in Wave 1 and, ten years later, in Wave 6. The analysis regresses SRH by gender on socioeconomic status, controlling for various sociodemographic, health, and socioeconomic variables, as well as welfare regime indicators, at two points in time. Past health variables are also controlled for in order to evaluate their effect on SRH at the time of the investigation. A significant gender gap in SRH is found from childhood to late life. The association of socioeconomic status with poorer SRH is significant over time and within welfare state regimes. Consequently, the relationship between gender and SRH, and the extent to which it varies by socioeconomic position, does appear to differ across welfare state regimes. In all regimes and all points in time, including retrospective childhood SRH, women report poorer health than men. The analysis underscores the association between SRH and socioeconomic status in relation to gender in late life and finds that it correlates differently for men and women. The odds of women experiencing poorer SRH are higher, although they become more moderate over time. Even under the most egalitarian welfare regimes, gender differences in the nexus of SRH and socioeconomic status do not favor women.