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Biomedical subjects

B J Soldo

Publications and source records attributed to B J Soldo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

Financial assistance from middle-aged couples to parents and children: racial-ethnic differences.

OBJECTIVES: To examine racial-ethnic differences in the allocation of financial transfers to parents, children, and others by middle-aged couples. METHODS: Multinomial specification of alternative recipients of financial transfers, using data from the 1992 Health and Retirement Survey. RESULTS: Transfer patterns are sensitive to parental health and wealth, to children being young or in school, as well as to the donors' health and wealth. Controlling for these and other factors, including family size and structure, Blacks and Whites are the most likely, and Hispanics the least likely, to financially help their parents compared to assisting offspring. Black couples are the most likely to sacrifice their own consumption to assist parents financially. DISCUSSION: Future research on transfers should attempt to capture unmeasured noneconomic sources of variation proxied by the race-ethnicity indicator.

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PubMed1997

Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old: an overview of the AHEAD Study.

This chapter provides background information for the study of Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD), a prospective panel survey of persons born in 1923 or earlier who were residing in the community at the time of the 1993 baseline. Interviews were sought with both spouses in married households, and an overall total of 8,222 were completed. We review the interdisciplinary scientific issues that motivated the study, describe the fundamental design decisions that structured AHEAD, and summarize the content in the core and experimental modules. The study provides unusually detailed data on cognition, family structure and transfers, and assets. Data are presented on sample selections, response rates, and oversamples of minority groups. Basic descriptive data on the demographic, health, and socioeconomic attributes of respondents also are presented. Plans for future waves of AHEAD are described, including a next-of-kin interview for decreased respondents.

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PubMed1997

The division of family labor: care for elderly parents.

We consider the division of caregiving efforts among the children of older, functionally limited parents. Our model of parental care assumes that care decisions are made in the context of an extended family, with each child taking into account not only the parent's needs and the child's own circumstances, but also the characteristics and actual care behavior of siblings. We propose a simultaneous-Tobit statistical framework that embodies these assumptions. The model is estimated using data from the 1993 Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study. The findings indicate that a child's hours of parent care are reduced, but on much less than a one-for-one basis, as the parent-care hours of siblings increase. We also find that a child's supply of parent-care hours is reduced by having sisters, holding constant the care efforts of siblings.

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PubMed1997

Selection of children to provide care: the effect of earlier parental transfers.

We use the first wave of data from the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study to examine the effects of past parent-to-child financial transfers on selection of a child to provide assistance with basic personal care for unmarried parents. We estimate a fixed-effects conditional logit model and find a positive and significant association between past financial transfers and a child's current helping behavior. The coefficient of past financial transfers is in the direction hypothesized, and its magnitude is 80% as large as that of gender, a well-documented powerful predictor of parental caregiving. There appears to be substantial evidence that earlier parent-to-child financial gifts play a role in determining which child in the family will provide assistance.

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PubMed1991

Intergenerational transfers: a question of perspective.

Informal intergenerational transfers have traditionally been examined from the perspective of the older generation; more recent studies have proceeded from the perspective of adult children. Drawing upon principles of formal demography, we establish the mathematical relationship between the two generations' perspectives. We then consider the importance of generational perspective with regard to prevalence estimates of intrafamily transfers. Transfers examined include coresidence, household and financial assistance, and personal caregiving. Results have implications for projection of future trends in intrafamily transfers and for data collection.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Family, households, and care arrangements of frail older women: a structural analysis.

Previous research has examined determinants of the living arrangements and the informal-care arrangements of older women; research on care arrangements has often taken living arrangements as given. Here we consider each separately, then go on to analyze the simultaneous determinants of living and care arrangements. Factors influencing these outcomes can be categorized as indicators of opportunities, resources, needs, or preferences. Of particular interest is the extent to which kin availability--specifically, the existence of living children--constrains opportunities, the role of financial resources, and the consequences of needs as revealed by levels of physical and mental disability. Our analysis consists of multinomial-logit models estimated with data from the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey. The results indicate the importance of kin availability, with striking differences in the living and care arrangements between childless and other older women. Among those with children, there are less striking but consistent differences according to the number and sex composition of living children. Finally, variables representing needs for care are generally the strongest predictors of all the outcomes analyzed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1988

America's elderly.

The older population in the US has grown twice as fast as the rest of the population in the last 20 years. This growth is expected to accelerate early in the next century as the large baby boom cohorts move through middle age and become elderly. Today, about 1 in 8 Americans is 65 years of age or older. By 2030, 1 out of every 4 persons will be in older person. Substantial improvements in life expectancy at all ages, particularly at extreme old age, mean that not only will there be a greater proportion of elderly in the population, but the more will be the "oldest-old," over 85. By 2050, they will be more than 1/4 of the population. As people live longer, many are active and healthy well past retirement. However, many individuals living into their 80s have to cope with chronic disabilities affecting their capacity to perform day-to-day activities. Modern medicine has made great inroads against mortality from such illnesses as heart disease and stroke, but has not eliminated all the effects of these diseases. As the population ages, the issues of health care funding and availability, particularly long-term care, increase in importance. Contrary to widespread belief, the elderly are not abandoned by their families to nursing home care. The vast majority--95%--live in the community. Those needing assistance generally receive help from family and friends. This has created a tremendous demand for federal subsidies to support community-based long-term care services. 1/4 of the federal budget is now spent on the elderly--$270 billion in 1986. Medicaid and Medicare are among the government's success stories, but these programs are threatened by their very success. Economists estimate that government expenditures are 3 times greater for the elderly than for children, raising the issue of "intergenerational equity"--how to balance the amount of care society provides to those who have already contributed with what is provided to those who will contribute in the future. The view that the young and old simply compete for fixed resources is misleading. It ignores the interdependence among generations, and the burdens and benefits of intergenerational transfers at all stages of the life course.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Household composition choices of older unmarried women.

This article extends previous research on the household composition of older unmarried women, using a statistical model that treats each of a woman's surviving children as a distinct potential provider of a shared household. Additional possibilities--living alone, living with other nuclear-family relatives, and living with others--are also recognized, providing a varied range of household-structure opportunities for older women. The approach allows us to identify individual child attributes associated with the propensity to coreside with the older unmarried mother. The results confirm earlier findings regarding the importance of income, age, and disability status as determinants of the household composition of older women. We find, however, that unmarried children, especially sons, are more likely to share a household with an elderly mother than are married children. Working reduces the likelihood that a married daughter will live with her older mother. Overall, the findings suggest that the attributes, more so than the sheer numbers, of living children influence the household structure of their mothers.

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PubMed1987

Central catecholamines, cognitive impairment, and affective state in elderly schizophrenics and controls.

Central catecholamine concentrations were determined in autopsy samples from older schizophrenic and control subjects for both the hypothalamus and the nucleus accumbens. The results of these analyses and demographic variables were regressed on antemortem measures of cognitive function and mood state. In the hypothalamus, there are significant direct relationships of homovanillic acid (HVA) and 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG) with depressed mood, as measured by an adaptation of the Hamilton Rating Scale for depression. In the nucleus accumbens, dopamine (DA) and MHPG had significant inverse relationships with antemortem cognitive function, as measured by an adaptation of the Mini Mental State Exam. Results in this sample indicate that after controlling for age, the catecholamine concentrations accounted for approximately 50% of the variance in the antemortem measures of mood or cognition, depending on the loci measured.

3,4-Dihydroxyphenylacetic Acid↗
PubMed1985

Platelet monoamine oxidase activity: demographic characteristics contribute to enzyme activity variability.

In a large (n = 459) sample of adults free of psychiatric, neurologic, and endocrinologic disease, platelet monoamine oxidase activity was analyzed by multiple regression of the demographic variables age, race, and gender on enzyme activity. Reported here are variations for all three demographic variables such that significantly greater enzyme activity is seen in female, older, and white subjects relative to male, younger, and black subjects. For each demographic group the data demonstrated a curvilinear relationship of age and enzyme activity with a nadir of activity at age 30. For this sample enzyme activity nearly doubled between subjects at age 30 and at age 80. We believe this study to be the first to report racial differences in this enzyme activity and to analyze normative data for this enzyme by multiple regression techniques.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Dynamics of health changes in the oldest old: new perspectives and evidence.

Improvement in survival at advanced ages suggests that important changes in health and the natural history of disease processes may be occurring concurrently. a general model based upon cohort and life-course perspectives describes the changing relation of morbidity, disability, and mortality over time. Variability across different social and economic conditions is examined among institutionalized and non-institutionalized elderly, and between the United States and Japan. Future policy must take account of the qualitative, as well as the quantitative, changes in aging.

Aged↗
PubMed1985

Health status and service needs of the oldest old: current patterns and future trends.

The costs--economic and social--of projected increased use of long-term care services by the oldest old will be borne by third-party payers and by their families, who already supply the bulk of personal care services in the community. However, use of health services is concerned among a relatively small group of disabled aged; efficient planning for those aged 85 and over requires early reliable identification of those most in need. Life table models can be used to display health care policy options.

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PubMed1984

Determinants of the community living arrangements of older unmarried women.

Data from the nationally representative 1976 Survey of Income and Education provide the opportunity to examine the joint effects of age, marital status, personal income, and the need for functional assistance on living arrangements of older unmarried white women. A particular interest in this research is testing the hypothesis that the effects of income and functional health are interactive. This hypothesis implies that the effect of functional disability on living arrangements is contingent on level of personal income. Log-linear model analyses indicate that, although the main effects of all independent variables except marital status are significant, none of the interaction effects are significant. Odds calculated under the best-fitting model show that an unimpaired older woman has seven times the chance of living alone as one who requires frequent assistance, whereas those in the lowest income group have only a quarter of the likelihood of living alone as someone in the highest income group.

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