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Objective: This study seeks to determine if persistently low or declining feelings of usefulness to others in later life predict increased mortality hazard in older adults. Method: Data on change in perceptions of usefulness, health, behavioral and psychosocial covariates, and mortality originate from the MacArthur Study of Successful Aging, a prospective study of 1,189 older adults (aged 70 to 79). Results: Older adults with persistently low feelings of usefulness or who experienced a decline to low feelings of usefulness during the first 3 years of the study experienced a greater hazard of mortality (sociodemographic adjusted hazard ratio = 1.75; 95% confidence interval = 1.22, 2.51) during a subsequent 9-year follow-up as compared to older adults with persistently high feelings of usefulness. Discussion: Older adults with persistently low perceived usefulness or feelings of usefulness that decline to a low level may be a vulnerable group with increased risk for poor health outcomes in later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined feelings of usefulness to others as a predictor of disability and mortality risk in a sample of older adults (aged 70-79 years) from the MacArthur Study of Successful Aging. We examined participants' perceptions of their usefulness to friends and family, measured at a baseline interview, as a predictor of subsequent increases in self-reported mobility disability, the onset of difficulty in performing activities of daily living, or mortality occurrence over a 7-year follow-up period. Compared with older adults who frequently felt useful to others, those who never or rarely felt useful were more likely to experience an increase in disability or to die over the 7-year period, even when we accounted for a number of demographic, health status, behavioral, and psychosocial factors. This suggests that feelings of usefulness may shape health trajectories in older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: We address the extent to which adolescent cognition predicts dementia risk in later life, mediated by educational attainment and occupational complexity., Methods: Using data from Project Talent Aging Study (PTAS), we fitted two structural equation models to test whether adolescent cognition predicts cognitive impairment (CI) and Ascertain Dementia 8 (AD8) status simultaneously (N Cognitive Assessment  = 2477) and AD8 alone (N Questionnaire  = 6491) 60 years later, mediated by education and occupational complexity. Co-twin control analysis examined 82 discordant pairs for CI/AD8., Results: Education partially mediated the effect of adolescent cognition on CI in the cognitive assessment aample and AD8 in the questionnaire sample (Ps < 0.001). Within twin pairs, differences in adolescent cognition were small, but intrapair differences in education predicted CI status., Discussion: Adolescent cognition predicted dementia risk 60 years later, partially mediated through education. Educational attainment, but not occupational complexity, contributes to CI risk beyond its role as a mediator of adolescent cognition, further supported by the co-twin analyses., Highlights: Project Talent Aging Study follows enrollees from high school for nearly 60 years. General cognitive ability in high school predicts later-life cognitive impairment. Low education is a risk partially due to its association with cognitive ability., (© 2024 The Authors. Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.)

Introduction and Rationale: Positive life experiences are potentially-rewarding events and behaviors, such as social and romantic interactions, experiences of relaxation and physical comfort, time spent in nature, and other leisure activities. To date, there is limited evidence linking positive life experiences to long-term health outcomes., Objective and Methods: The current study used data from N = 1243 participants in the Midlife Development in the US Study Biomarker Project to examine whether greater frequency of a range of different positive experiences and greater level of enjoyment of these experiences was linked to survival over a 12- to-16-year period in Cox proportional hazards models. The potential mediating roles of positive affect, depression, perceived stress, and an allostatic load index of physiological dysregulation in these associations were also examined., Results: Greater frequency of positive experiences and greater enjoyment of positive experiences were both associated with a reduced hazard of mortality over the 12- to 16-year period. Models assessing a single mediator showed that both associations were mediated by decreased depression and decreased perceived stress, but not by positive affect or allostatic load. In supplementary multi-mediation models, depression was the only significant mediator of the frequency-survival and enjoyment-survival associations., Conclusions: Positive life experiences may confer long-term survival benefits, partially through lessening depressive symptomatology., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We leveraged a unique school-based longitudinal cohort-the Project Talent Aging Study-to examine whether attending higher quality schools is associated with cognitive performance among older adults in the United States (mean age = 74.8). Participants (n = 2,289) completed telephone neurocognitive testing. Six indicators of high school quality, reported by principals at the time of schooling, were predictors of respondents' cognitive function 58 years later. To account for school-clustering, multilevel linear and logistic models were applied. We found that attending schools with a higher number of teachers with graduate training was the clearest predictor of later-life cognition, and school quality mattered especially for language abilities. Importantly, Black respondents (n = 239; 10.5 percentage) were disproportionately exposed to low quality high schools. Therefore, increased investment in schools, especially those that serve Black children, could be a powerful strategy to improve later life cognitive health among older adults in the United States., Competing Interests: The authors listed certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non‐financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript., (© 2023 The Authors. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring published by Wiley Periodicals, LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.)

Objective: Socioeconomic disparities in physiological well-being may be a pathway to the poorer health outcomes observed in those of lower socioeconomic status (SES). The present research examined greater frequency of positive life experiences (POS) as a route through which greater cumulative SES (CSES) may be linked to lower allostatic load (AL), a multisystem index of physiological dysregulation, and assessed whether the association between POS and AL varies along the socioeconomic spectrum., Method: These associations were examined using data from the Midlife Development in the United States Biomarker Project (N = 2,096). Analyses included tests of whether positive experiences mediated the CSES-AL association, whether CSES moderated associations of positive experiences and AL, and whether CSES moderated positive experience mediation of the CSES-AL association (moderated mediation)., Results: The observed association between CSES and AL was weakly mediated by POS. CSES moderated the POS-AL association, such that POS was associated with AL only at lower levels of CSES. The moderated mediation analysis showed that POS mediated the association between CSES and AL only at lower levels of CSES., Conclusions: The results suggest complexity in associations between cumulative socioeconomic advantage, positive life events, and physiological well-being. Positive life events may play a stronger role in physiological health in those of lower socioeconomic advantage, as one of multiple pathways through which lower SES is linked to poor health. Given the modifiability of access to, and frequency of, positive life events, the potential role of positive experiences in lessening health disparities warrants further study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Estimated heritability of educational attainment (EA) varies widely, from 23% to 80%, with growing evidence suggesting the degree to which genetic variation contributes to individual differences in EA is highly dependent upon situational factors. We aimed to decompose EA into influences attributable to genetic propensity and to environmental context and their interplay, while considering influences of rearing household economic status (HES) and sex. We use the Project Talent Twin and Sibling Study, drawn from the population-representative cohort of high school students assessed in 1960 and followed through 2014, to ages 68-72. Data from 3552 twins and siblings from 1741 families were analyzed using multilevel regression and multiple group structural equation models. Individuals from less-advantaged backgrounds had lower EA and less variation. Genetic variance accounted for 51% of the total variance, but within women and men, 40% and 58% of the total variance respectively. Men had stable genetic variance on EA across all HES strata, whereas high HES women showed the same level of genetic influence as men, and lower HES women had constrained genetic influence on EA. Unexpectedly, middle HES women showed the largest constraints in genetic influence on EA. Shared family environment appears to make an outsized contribution to greater variability for women in this middle stratum and whether they pursue more EA. Implications are that without considering early life opportunity, genetic studies on education may mischaracterize sex differences because education reflects different degrees of genetic and environmental influences for women and men.

Background: A large literature demonstrates associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, including physiological health and well-being. Moreover, gender differences are often observed among measures of both SES and health. However, relationships between SES and health are sometimes questioned given the lack of true experiments, and the potential biological and SES mechanisms explaining gender differences in health are rarely examined simultaneously., Purpose: To use a national sample of twins to investigate lifetime socioeconomic adversity and a measure of physiological dysregulation separately by sex., Methods: Using the twin sample in the second wave of the Midlife in the United States survey (MIDUS II), biometric regression analysis was conducted to determine whether the established SES-physiological health association is observed among twins both before and after adjusting for potential familial-level confounds (additive genetic and shared environmental influences that may underly the SES-health link), and whether this association differs among men and women., Results: Although individuals with less socioeconomic adversity over the lifespan exhibited less physiological dysregulation among this sample of twins, this association only persisted among male twins after adjusting for familial influences., Conclusions: Findings from the present study suggest that, particularly for men, links between socioeconomic adversity and health are not spurious or better explained by additive genetic or early shared environmental influences. Furthermore, gender-specific role demands may create differential associations between SES and health., (© Society of Behavioral Medicine 2021. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: This study examined whether perceived neighborhood cohesion (the extent to which neighbors trust and count on one another) buffers against the mental health effects of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic., Methods: The XXX University National COVID-19 and Mental Health Study surveyed US adults (N = 3965; M age = 39 years), measuring depressive symptoms, staying home more during than before the 2020 pandemic, and perceived neighborhood cohesion., Results: A series of linear regressions indicated that perceiving one's neighborhood as more cohesive was not only associated with fewer depressive symptoms, but also attenuated the relationship between spending more time at home during the pandemic and depressive symptoms. These relationships persisted even after taking into account several individual-level sociodemographic characteristics as well as multiple contextual features, i.e., median household income, population density, and racial/ethnic diversity of the zip codes in which participants resided., Conclusions: Neighborhood cohesion may be leveraged to mitigate pandemic impacts on depressive symptoms., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background/objectives: Exposure to air pollution may contribute to both increasing depressive symptoms and decreasing episodic memory in older adulthood, but few studies have examined this hypothesis in a longitudinal context. Accordingly, we examined the association between air pollution and changes in depressive symptoms (DS) and episodic memory (EM) and their interrelationship in oldest-old (aged 80 and older) women., Design: Prospective cohort data from the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study-Epidemiology of Cognitive Health Outcomes., Setting: Geographically diverse community-dwelling population., Participants: A total of 1,583 dementia-free women aged 80 and older., Measurements: Women completed up to six annual memory assessments (latent composite of East Boston Memory Test and Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status) and the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15). We estimated 3-year average exposures to regional particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter below 2.5 μm (PM 2.5 ) (interquartile range [IQR] = 3.35 μg/m 3 ) and gaseous nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) (IQR = 9.55 ppb) at baseline and during a remote period 10 years earlier, using regionalized national universal kriging., Results: Latent change structural equation models examined whether residing in areas with higher pollutant levels was associated with annual changes in standardized EM and DS while adjusting for potential confounders. Remote NO 2 (β = .287 per IQR; P = .002) and PM 2.5 (β = .170 per IQR; P = .019) exposure was significantly associated with larger increases in standardized DS, although the magnitude of the difference, less than 1 point on the GDS-15, is of questionable clinical significance. Higher DS were associated with accelerated EM declines (β = -.372; P = .001), with a significant indirect effect of remote NO 2 and PM 2.5 exposure on EM declines mediated by DS. There were no other significant indirect exposure effects., Conclusion: These findings in oldest-old women point to potential adverse effects of late-life exposure to air pollution on subsequent interplay between DS and EM, highlighting air pollution as an environmental health risk factor for older women., (© 2020 The American Geriatrics Society.)

Objectives: The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was designed as an interdisciplinary study with a strong focus on health, retirement, and socioeconomic environment, to study their dynamic relationships over time in a sample of mid-life adults. The study includes validated self-report measures and individual items that capture the experiences of stressful events (stressor exposures) and subjective assessments of stress (perceived stress) within specific life domains., Methods: This article reviews and catalogs the peer-reviewed publications that have used the HRS to examine associations between psychosocial stress measures and psychological, physical health, and economic outcomes., Results: We describe the research to date using HRS measures of the following stress types: traumatic and life events, childhood adversity, caregiving and other chronic stressors, discrimination, social strain and loneliness, work stress, and neighborhood disorder. We highlight how to take further advantage of the longitudinal study to test complex biopsychosocial models of healthy aging., Discussion: The HRS provides one of the most comprehensive assessments of psychosocial stress in existing population-based studies and offers the potential for a deeper understanding of how psychosocial factors are related to healthy aging trajectories. The next generation of research examining stress and trajectories of aging in the HRS should test complex longitudinal and mediational relationships, include contextual factors in analyses, and include more collaboration between psychologists and population health researchers., (© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objectives: Generativity, or concern with contributing to others, is theorized to be an important goal of mid-to-late life. Greater self-perceptions of generativity are associated with better well-being over time. The aim of this study is to examine how generative self-perceptions and failure to meet generative expectations over time are linked to specific cognitive-affective states (feelings of connectedness, self-worth, and positive affect), and consequently, life satisfaction., Method: Analyses used data from Waves 2 and 3 of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Multiple mediation was utilized to assess whether these cognitive-affective states linked generative failure to decreased life satisfaction. A Johnson-Neyman moderation analysis determined whether these associations vary with age., Results: In demographically adjusted regressions, generative contributions and expectations were associated with greater perceived social connectedness, self-worth, and positive effect. Generative failure was associated with lower life satisfaction, a link that was strongest in the middle-aged and young-old and mediated by the cognitive-affective states., Discussion: Greater feelings of generativity, and more positive expectations for future contributions, are associated cross-sectionally and over time with better affective well-being. Positive affect, social connectedness, and self-worth may partially explain why generative failure over time is linked to decreased life satisfaction., (© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The Project Talent Twin and Sibling (PTTS) study includes 4481 multiples and their 522 nontwin siblings from 2233 families. The sample was drawn from Project Talent, a U.S. national longitudinal study of 377,000 individuals born 1942-1946, first assessed in 1960 and representative of U.S. students in secondary school (Grades 9-12). In addition to the twins and triplets, the 1960 dataset includes 84,000 siblings from 40,000 other families. This design is both genetically informative and unique in facilitating separation of the 'common' environment into three sources of variation: shared by all siblings within a family, specific to twin-pairs, and associated with school/community-level factors. We term this the GIFTS model for genetics, individual, family, twin, and school sources of variance. In our article published in a previous Twin Research and Human Genetics special issue, we described data collections conducted with the full Project Talent sample during 1960-1974, methods for the recent linking of siblings within families, identification of twins, and the design of a 54-year follow-up of the PTTS sample, when participants were 68-72 years old. In the current article, we summarize participation and data available from this 2014 collection, describe our method for assigning zygosity using survey responses and yearbook photographs, illustrate the GIFTS model applied to 1960 vocabulary scores from more than 80,000 adolescent twins, siblings and schoolmates and summarize the next wave of PTTS data collection being conducted as part of the larger Project Talent Aging Study.

Social stratification is an important mechanism of human organization that helps to explain health differences between demographic groups commonly associated with socioeconomic gradients. Individuals, or group of individuals, with similar health profiles may have had different stratification experiences. This is particularly true as social stratification is a significant non-measurable source of systematic unobservable differences in both SES indicators and health statuses of disadvantage. The goal of the present study was to expand the bulk of research that has traditionally treated socioeconomic and demographic characteristics as independent, additive influences on health by examining data from the United States. It is hypothesized that variation in an index of multi-system physiological dysregulation - allostatic load - is associated with social differentiation factors, sorting individuals with similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics into mutually exclusive econo-demographic classes. The data were from the Longitudinal and Biomarker samples of the national Study of Midlife Development in the US (MIDUS) conducted in 1995 and 2004/2006. Latent class analyses and regression analyses revealed that physiological dysregulation linked to socioeconomic variation among black people, females and older adults are associated with forces of stratification that confound socioeconomic and demographic indicators. In the United States, racial stratification of health is intrinsically related to the degree to which black people in general, and black females in particular, as a group, share an isolated status in society. Findings present evidence that disparities in health emerge from group-differentiation processes to the degree that individuals are distinctly exposed to the ecological, political, social, economic and historical contexts in which social stratification is ingrained. Given that health policies and programmes emanate from said legal and political environments, interventions should target the structural conditions that expose different subgroups to different stress risks in the first place.

This article reports on the impact of the Experience Corps® (EC) Baltimore program, an intergenerational, school-based program aimed at improving academic achievement and reducing disruptive school behavior in urban, elementary school students in Kindergarten through third grade (K-3). Teams of adult volunteers aged 60 and older were placed in public schools, serving 15 h or more per week, to perform meaningful and important roles to improve the educational outcomes of children and the health and well-being of volunteers. Findings indicate no significant impact of the EC program on standardized reading or mathematical achievement test scores among children in grades 1-3 exposed to the program. K-1st grade students in EC schools had fewer principal office referrals compared to K-1st grade students in matched control schools during their second year in the EC program; second graders in EC schools had fewer suspensions and expulsions than second graders in non-EC schools during their first year in the EC program. In general, both boys and girls appeared to benefit from the EC program in school behavior. The results suggest that a volunteer engagement program for older adults can be modestly effective for improving selective aspects of classroom behavior among elementary school students in under-resourced, urban schools, but there were no significant improvements in academic achievement. More work is needed to identify individual- and school-level factors that may help account for these results.

Objectives Mothers report higher levels of psychological stress than fathers. s. Psychological stress is posited to influence parenting practices that could increase children's obesity risk. However, previous studies have not investigated several aspects of maternal mental health and the moderating role of household structure on children's obesity risk. The objective was to investigate associations of maternal mental health with child obesity risk, and whether these associations differed by household structure (single-parent vs. dual parent/multigenerational). Methods Mothers and their 8-12 year old children (N = 175 dyads) completed baseline questionnaires on mothers' mental health and child anthropometrics. Separate logistic regressions assessed associations of standardized maternal mental health indicators with the odds of child overweight/obesity, controlling for child age, and women's BMI, age, education, employment status, and annual income. Household structure was investigated as a moderator of these relationships.Results There were no statistically significant relationships between maternal mental health characteristics and odds of child overweight/obesity. Among single mothers only, greater anxiety was associated with higher risk of child overweight/obesity [OR (95% CI) = 3.67 (1.27-10.62); p = 0.0163]; and greater life satisfaction was marginally associated with lower risk of child overweight/obesity [OR (95% CI) = 0.44 (0.19-1.01); p = 0.0522]. Mothers' life satisfaction may lower risk for their children's overweight/obesity, whereas higher anxiety may increase this risk, particularly among children living in single-mother households. Conclusions for Practice Future interventions could increase resources for single mothers to buffer the effects of stress and lower pediatric obesity risk.

Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Objectives: Research consistently shows that parents influence children's religiosity. However, few studies acknowledge that there is within-group variation in the intergenerational transmission of religiosity. In this article, we examine whether and how congruence in religiosity between generations changes over the family life course and identifies unique parent-child trajectory classes., Method: We used eight waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, including 1,084 parent-child dyads beginning in 1971 when the children were adolescents and young adults, followed up to 2005. Growth mixture models (GMM) were tested., Results: GMM revealed four temporal patterns: stable similar, child weakens, child strengthens, and child returns. Results showed that children who were married were more likely to be members of the child-returns class than members of the stable-similar class., Discussion: Results are discussed in terms of the utility of the separation-individuation process and the life-course framework for understanding intergenerational differences and their stability over time.

Objectives: A considerable volume of experimental evidence demonstrates that exposure to aging stereotypes can strongly influence cognitive performance among older individuals. However, whether such effects extend to stereotypes regarding older adults' generative (i.e. contributory) worth is not yet known. The present investigation sought to evaluate the effect of exposure to positive versus negative generative value primes on an important aspect of later life functioning, memory., Method: Participants of age 55 and older (n = 51) were randomly assigned to read a mock news article portraying older individuals as either an asset (positive prime) or a burden (negative prime) to society. Upon reading their assigned article, participants completed a post-priming memory assessment in which they were asked to recall a list of 30 words., Results: Those exposed to the negative prime showed significantly poorer memory performance relative to those exposed to the positive prime (d = 0.75), even when controlling for baseline memory performance and sociodemographic covariates., Conclusion: These findings suggest that negative messages regarding older adults' generative social value impair memory relative to positive ones. Though demonstrated in the short term, these results also point to the potential consequences of long-term exposure to such negative ideologies and may indicate a need to promote more positive societal conceptualizations of older adults' generative worth.

Perceptions of neighborhood disorder (trash, vandalism) and cohesion (neighbors trust one another) are related to residents' health. Affective and behavioral factors have been identified, but often in studies using geographically select samples. We use a nationally representative sample (n = 9032) of United States older adults from the Health and Retirement Study to examine cardiometabolic risk in relation to perceptions of neighborhood cohesion and disorder. Lower cohesion is significantly related to greater cardiometabolic risk in 2006/2008 and predicts greater risk four years later (2010/2012). The longitudinal relation is partially accounted for by anxiety and physical activity., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: Although a sizable body of research supports negative psychological consequences of caregiving, less is known about potential psychological benefits. This study aimed to examine whether caregiving was associated with enhanced generativity, or feeling like one makes important contributions to others. An additional aim was to examine the buffering potential of perceived generativity on adverse health outcomes associated with caregiving., Methods: Analyses utilized a subsample of participants (n = 3,815, ages 30-84 years) from the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS)., Results: Regression analyses adjusting for sociodemographic factors indicated greater negative affect and depression (p < .001) and lower levels of positive affect (p < .01), but higher self-perceptions of generativity (p < .001), in caregivers compared with non-caregivers. This association remained after adjusting for varying caregiving intensities and negative psychological outcomes. Additionally, generativity interacted with depression and negative affect (p values < .05) to lessen the likelihood of health-related cutbacks in work/household productivity among caregivers., Conclusions: Results suggest that greater feelings of generativity may be a positive aspect of caregiving that might help mitigate some of the adverse health and well-being consequences of care., Clinical Implications: Self-perceptions of generativity may help alleviate caregiver burden and explain why some caregivers fare better than others.

Higher income neighborhoods are associated with better health, a relation observed in many cross-sectional studies. However, prior research focused on the prevalence of health conditions, and examining the incidence of new health conditions may provide stronger support for a potential causal role of neighborhoods on health. We used the 2004 and 2014 waves of the Midlife in the United States Study (n = 1726; ages 34-83) to examine health condition incidence as a function of neighborhood income. Among participants who had lived in the same neighborhood across the time period, we hypothesized that higher neighborhood income would be associated with a lower incidence of health conditions ten years later. Health included 18 chronic conditions related to mental (anxiety, depression) and physical (cardiovascular, immune) health. Multinomial logistic regression analyses adjusting for individual income and sociodemographics indicated that the odds of developing two or more new health conditions (no new health conditions as referent), was significantly lower (OR = 0.92, CI: 0.86, 0.99) for every $10,000 increment in neighborhood income. Associations did not vary by age or neighborhood tenure. Results add to a literature documenting that higher neighborhood income is associated with better health.

Objectives: Negative perceptions of aging can be self-fulfilling prophecies, predicting worse cognitive and physical outcomes. Although older adults are portrayed as either lonely curmudgeons or perfect grandparents, little research addresses how perceptions of aging relate to social outcomes. We considered whether more positive expectations about aging encourage older adults to maintain or bolster their social network connections and support., Method: This study examined baseline, 12-, and 24-month questionnaire data from the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial, a longitudinal randomized volunteer intervention for adults aged 60 years and older. The associations between expectations regarding aging and different types of social support were tested using negative binomial and multiple regression models controlling for relevant covariates such as baseline levels of perceived support availability., Results: Participants with more positive expectations at baseline made more new friends 2 years later and had greater overall perceived support availability 12 months later. Notably, only participants with at least average perceived support availability at baseline showed an association between expectations and later support availability., Discussion: These results are the first to link overall expectations regarding aging to the social domain and suggest that the influence of perceptions of aging is not limited to physical or cognitive function., (© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Purpose: Regular physical activity is a key component of healthy aging, but few older adults meet physical activity guidelines. Poor aging expectations can contribute to this lack of activity, since negative stereotypes about the aging process can be internalized and affect physical performance. Although prior cross-sectional studies have shown that physical activity and aging expectations are associated, less is known about this association longitudinally, particularly among traditionally underrepresented groups. It is also unclear whether different domains of aging expectations are differentially associated with physical activity., Design and Methods: The number of minutes/week of physical activity in which Baltimore Experience Corps Trial participants (N = 446; 92.6% African American) engaged were measured using the CHAMPS questionnaire, while their aging expectations were measured using the ERA-12 survey. Linear mixed effects models assessed the association between physical activity and aging expectations over 2 years, both in full and sex-stratified samples. Separate models were also fit for different ERA-12 domains., Results: We found that higher overall expectations regarding aging are associated with higher engagement in moderate- to high-intensity physical activity over a 2-year period of time for women only. When the ERA-12 domains were examined separately, only the physical domain was associated with physical activity, both in women and overall., Implications: Low expectations regarding physical aging may represent a barrier to physical activity for older adults. Given that most older adults do not meet recommended physical activity guidelines, identifying factors that improve aging expectations may be a way to increase physical activity levels in aging populations., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: Increasing evidence suggests that chronic exposure to unfair treatment or day-to-day discrimination increases risk for poor health, but data on biological stress mechanisms are limited. This study examined chronic experiences of unfair treatment in relation to allostatic load (AL), a multisystem index of biological dysregulation., Method: Data are from a sample of 233 African-American adults (37-85 years; 64% women). Perceptions of everyday unfair treatment were measured by questionnaire. An AL index was computed as the sum of 7 separate physiological system risk indices (cardiovascular regulation, lipid, glucose, inflammation, sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis)., Results: Adjusting for sociodemographics, medication use, smoking status, alcohol consumption, depressive symptoms, lifetime discrimination, and global perceived stress, everyday mistreatment was associated with higher AL., Conclusions: The results add to a growing literature on the effects of chronic bias and discrimination by demonstrating how such experiences are instantiated in downstream physiological systems. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Feeling unsafe in one's neighborhood is associated with poor health. This relation may be conferred through multiple pathways, including greater psychological distress and health behaviors that are associated with poorer health and perceptions of neighborhood safety. Women and older adults often report feeling less safe in their environments despite having a lower risk of victimization than men and younger adults, and it is unclear whether these differences influence the health-perception relationship. We used the Midlife in the United States study to test whether baseline neighborhood safety perceptions would be associated with chronic health conditions 10 years later, and whether this relation differs by gender, age, and individual and neighborhood SES. Chronic health conditions included items such as respiratory problems, cancer, autoimmune disorders, digestive problems, pain, infections, cardiovascular conditions, sleep problems, and depression and anxiety. Results indicated that people who perceived lower neighborhood safety had more health problems 10 years later than those perceiving more neighborhood safety. These findings persisted after adjusting for baseline health, neighborhood income, individual income, and individual sociodemographics. This relation was partially mediated by smoking. Results did not differ by gender, age, or individual SES. Our results indicate a longitudinal relation between feeling unsafe in one's neighborhood and later health problems among men and women representing a wide age and income range. Moreover, our findings support a behavioral pathway through which neighborhood safety perceptions may be linked to health.

Poor neighborhoods may represent a situation of chronic stress, and may therefore be associated with health-related correlates of stress. We examined whether lower neighborhood income would relate to higher allostatic load, or physiological well-being, through psychological, affective, and behavioral pathways. Using data from the Biomarker Project of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study and the 2000 Census, we demonstrated that people living in lower income neighborhoods have higher allostatic load net of individual income. Moreover, findings indicate that this relation is partially accounted for by anxious arousal symptoms, fast food consumption, smoking, and exercise habits., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: Being and feeling generative, defined as exhibiting concern and behavior to benefit others, is an important developmental goal of midlife and beyond. Although a growing body of evidence suggests mental and physical health benefits of feeling generative in later life, little information exists as to the modifiability of generativity perceptions. The present study examines whether participation in the intergenerational civic engagement program, Experience Corps (EC), benefits older adults' self-perceptions of generativity., Method: Levels of generativity were compared in older adults randomized to serve as EC volunteers or controls (usual volunteer opportunities) in the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial at 4-, 12-, and 24-month evaluation points over the 2-year trial. Analyses utilized intention-to-treat and complier average causal effects (CACE) analyses which incorporate degree of intervention exposure in analytic models., Results: Participants randomized to the EC group had significantly higher levels of generative desire and perceptions of generative achievement than controls at each follow-up point; CACE analyses indicate a dose-response effect with a greater magnitude of intervention effect with greater exposure to the EC program., Discussion: Results provide the first-ever, large-scale experimental demonstration that participation in an intergenerational civic engagement program can positively alter self-perceptions of generativity in older adulthood., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to compare the relative fit of two alternative factor models of allostatic load (AL) and physiological systems, and to test factor invariance across age and sex., Methods: Data were from the Midlife in the United States II Biomarker Project, a large (n = 1255) multisite study of adults aged 34 to 84 years (56.8% women). Specifically, 23 biomarkers were included, representing seven physiological systems: metabolic lipids, metabolic glucose, blood pressure, parasympathetic nervous system, sympathetic nervous system, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and inflammation. For factor invariance tests, age was categorized into three groups (≤45, 45-60, and >60 years)., Results: A bifactor model where biomarkers simultaneously load onto a common AL factor and seven unique system-specific factors provided the best fit to the biomarker data (comparative fit index = 0.967, root mean square error of approximation = 0.043, standardized root mean square residual = 0.028). Results from the bifactor model were consistent with invariance across age groups and sex., Conclusions: These results support the theory that represents and operationalizes AL as multisystem physiological dysregulation and operationalizing AL as the shared variance across biomarkers. Results also demonstrate that in addition to the variance in biomarkers accounted for by AL, individual physiological systems account for unique variance in system-specific biomarkers. A bifactor model allows researchers greater precision to examine both AL and the unique effects of specific systems.

Purpose: Experience Corps (EC) represents a high-intensity, intergenerational civic engagement activity where older adults serve as mentors and tutors in elementary schools. Although high-intensity volunteer opportunities are designed to enhance the health and well being of older adult volunteers, little is known about the negative and positive aspects of volunteering unique to intergenerational programs from the volunteer's perspective., Design and Methods: Stressors and rewards associated with volunteering in EC were explored in 8 focus group discussions with 46 volunteers from EC Baltimore. Transcripts were coded for frequently expressed themes., Results: Participants reported stressors and rewards within 5 key domains: intergenerational (children's problem behavior, working with and helping children, observing/facilitating improvement or transformation in a child, and developing a special connection with a child); external to EC (poor parenting and children's social stressors); interpersonal (challenges in working with teachers and bonding/making social connections); personal (enjoyment, self-enhancement/achievement, and being/feeling more active); and structural (satisfaction with the structural elements of the EC program)., Implications: Volunteers experienced unique intergenerational stressors related to children's problem behavior and societal factors external to the EC program. Overall, intergenerational, interpersonal, and personal rewards from volunteering, as well as program structure may have balanced the stress associated with volunteering. A better understanding of stressors and rewards from high-intensity volunteer programs may enhance our understanding of how intergenerational civic engagement volunteering affects well being in later life and may inform project modifications to maximize such benefits for future volunteers and those they serve., (© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: Living a purposeful life is associated with better mental and physical health, including longevity. Accumulating evidence shows that these associations might be explained by the association between life purpose and regulation of physiological systems involved in the stress response. The aim of this study was to investigate the prospective associations between life purpose and allostatic load over a 10-year period., Methods: Analyses were conducted using data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. Assessment of life purpose, psychological covariates and demographics were obtained at baseline, while biomarkers of allostatic load were assessed at the 10-year follow-up., Results: We found that greater life purpose predicted lower levels of allostatic load at follow-up, even when controlling for other aspects of psychological well-being potentially associated with allostatic load. Further, life purpose was also a strong predictor of individual differences in self-health locus of control-i.e., beliefs about how much influence individuals can exert on their own health-which, in turn, partially mediated the association between purpose and allostatic load. Although life purpose was also negatively linked to other-health locus of control-i.e., the extent to which individuals believe their health is controlled by others/chance-this association did not mediate the impact of life purpose on allostatic load., Conclusion: The current study provides the first empirical evidence for the long-term physiological correlates of life purpose and supports the hypothesis that self-health locus of control acts as one proximal psychological mechanism through which life purpose may be linked to positive biological outcomes., (Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Introduction: There is a substantial interest in identifying interventions that can protect and buffer older adults from atrophy in the cortex and particularly, the hippocampus, a region important to memory. We report the 2-year effects of a randomized controlled trial of an intergenerational social health promotion program on older men's and women's brain volumes., Methods: The Brain Health Study simultaneously enrolled, evaluated, and randomized 111 men and women (58 interventions; 53 controls) within the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial to evaluate the intervention impact on biomarkers of brain health at baseline and annual follow-ups during the 2-year trial exposure., Results: Intention-to-treat analyses on cortical and hippocampal volumes for full and sex-stratified samples revealed program-specific increases in volumes that reached significance in men only (P's ≤ .04). Although men in the control arm exhibited age-related declines for 2 years, men in the Experience Corps arm showed a 0.7% to 1.6% increase in brain volumes. Women also exhibited modest intervention-specific gains of 0.3% to 0.54% by the second year of exposure that contrasted with declines of about 1% among women in the control group., Discussion: These findings showed that purposeful activity embedded within a social health promotion program halted and, in men, reversed declines in brain volume in regions vulnerable to dementia., Clinical Trial Registration: NCT0038., Competing Interests: Disclosures: No other disclosures were reported., (Copyright © 2015 The Alzheimer's Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We examined the impact of the Experience Corps(®) (EC) program on school climate within Baltimore City public elementary schools. In this program, teams of older adult volunteers were placed in high intensity (>15 h per week), meaningful roles in public elementary schools, to improve the educational outcomes of children as well as the health and well-being of volunteers. During the first year of EC participation, school climate was perceived more favorably among staff and students in EC schools as compared to those in comparison schools. However, with a few notable exceptions, perceived school climate did not differ for staff or students in intervention and comparison schools during the second year of exposure to the EC program. These findings suggest that perceptions of school climate may be altered by introducing a new program into elementary schools; however, research examining how perceptions of school climate are impacted over a longer period is warranted.

Experience Corps® (EC) was designed to simultaneously increase cognitive, social, and physical activity through high-intensity volunteerism in elementary school classrooms. It is, therefore, highly likely that EC participation may alter pre-existing patterns of lifestyle activity. This study examined the impact of "real-world" volunteer engagement on the frequency of participation in various lifestyle activities over a 2-year period. Specifically, we examined intervention-related changes on reported activity levels at 12 and 24 months post-baseline using Intention-to-Treat (ITT) and Complier Average Causal Effect (CACE) analyses, which account for the amount of program exposure. ITT analyses indicated that, compared to the control group, EC participants reported modest increases (approximately half a day/month) in overall activity level, especially in intellectual and physical activities 12 months post-baseline. Increases in activity were not found at the 24-month assessment. CACE models revealed similar findings for overall activity as well as for intellectual and physical activities at 12 months. Additionally, CACE findings suggested modest increases in social activity at 12 months and in intellectual and passive activities at 24 months post-baseline. This community-based, health promotion intervention has the potential to impact lifestyle activity, which may lead to long-term increases in activity and to other positive cognitive, physical, and psychosocial health outcomes.

Objectives: To determine whether there is a relationship between early life adversity (ELA) and biological parameters known to predict health risks and to examine the extent to which circumstances in midlife mediate this relationship., Methods: We analyzed data on 1180 respondents from the biomarker subsample of the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. ELA assessments were based on childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (i.e., on welfare, perceived low income, and less educated parents) and other stressors (e.g., parental death, parental divorce, and parental physical abuse). The outcome variable was cumulative allostatic load (AL), a marker of biological risk. We also incorporate information on adult circumstances, including than following: education, social relationships, and health behaviors., Results: Childhood socioeconomic adversity and physical abuse were associated with increased AL (B = 0.094, standard error = 0.041, and B = 0.263, standard error = 0.091 respectively), with nonsignificant associations for parental divorce and death with AL. Adult education mediated the relationship between socioeconomic ELA and cumulative AL to the point of nonsignificance, with this factor alone explaining nearly 40% of the relationship. The association between childhood physical abuse and AL remained even after adjusting for adult educational attainments, social relationships, and health behaviors. These associations were most pronounced for secondary stress systems, including inflammation, cardiovascular function, and lipid metabolism., Conclusions: The physiological consequences of early life socioeconomic adversity are attenuated by achieving high levels of schooling later on. The adverse consequences of childhood physical abuse, on the other hand, persist in multivariable-adjusted analysis.

Objective: Personality traits predict both health behaviors and mortality risk across the life course. However, there are few investigations that have examined these effects in a single study. Thus, there are limitations in assessing if health behaviors explain why personality predicts health and longevity., Method: Utilizing 14-year mortality data from a national sample of over 6,000 adults from the Midlife in the United States Study, we tested whether alcohol use, smoking behavior, and waist circumference mediated the personality-mortality association., Results: After adjusting for demographic variables, higher levels of Conscientiousness predicted a 13% reduction in mortality risk over the follow-up. Structural equation models provided evidence that heavy drinking, smoking, and greater waist circumference significantly mediated the Conscientiousness-mortality association by 42%., Conclusion: The current study provided empirical support for the health-behavior model of personality-Conscientiousness influences the behaviors persons engage in and these behaviors affect the likelihood of poor health outcomes. Findings highlight the usefulness of assessing mediation in a structural equation modeling framework when testing proportional hazards. In addition, the current findings add to the growing literature that personality traits can be used to identify those at risk for engaging in behaviors that deteriorate health and shorten the life span.

Objective: Analyses test the hypothesis that aspects of social relationships (quantity of ties, social support and social strain) are associated with differences in levels of biological risk across multiple major physiological regulatory systems and consequently overall multi-systems risk (i.e., allostatic load [AL])., Methods: Data are from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study--a bi-ethnic, prospective, multi-center epidemiological study, initiated in 1985-1986 to track the development of cardiovascular risk in young adulthood (N=5115). At the year 15 follow-up when participants were between 32 and 45 years of age, additional social and biological data were collected; biological data used to assess AL were collected at the Oakland, CA and Chicago, IL sites (N=844)., Results: Social strains were most strongly and positively related to overall AL (Cohen's d=.79 for highest vs. lowest quartile), and to each of its component biological subsystems, independent of social ties and support as well as sociodemographics and health behaviors. Social ties and emotional support were also negatively related to AL (Cohen's d=.33 and d=.44 for lowest vs. highest quartiles of ties and support, respectively) though controls for social strains reduced these associations to non-significance. Social support and social strain were more strongly related to overall AL than to any of its component subscales while social ties were less strongly related to AL and to its component subscales. There was no evidence that effects differed by sex, age or ethnicity., Conclusions: Findings focus attention on the particularly strong relationship between social strains and profiles of biological risk and support the cumulative impact of social factors on biological risks, showing larger effects for cumulative AL than for any of the individual biological systems., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Childhood abuse increases adult risk for morbidity and mortality. Less clear is how this "toxic" stress becomes embedded to influence health decades later, and whether protective factors guard against these effects. Early biological embedding is hypothesized to occur through programming of the neural circuitry that influences physiological response patterns to subsequent stress, causing wear and tear across multiple regulatory systems. To examine this hypothesis, we related reports of childhood abuse to a comprehensive 18-biomarker measure of multisystem risk and also examined whether presence of a loving parental figure buffers against the impact of childhood abuse on adult risk. A total of 756 subjects (45.8% white, 42.7% male) participated in this ancillary substudy of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study. Childhood stress was determined by using the Risky Families Questionnaire, a well-validated retrospective self-report scale. Linear regression models adjusting for age, sex, race, parental education, and oral contraceptive use found a significant positive relationship between reports of childhood abuse and multisystem health risks [B (SE) = 0.68 (0.16); P < 0.001]. Inversely, higher amounts of reported parental warmth and affection during childhood was associated with lower multisystem health risks [B (SE) = -0.40 (0.14); P < 0.005]. A significant interaction of abuse and warmth (P < 0.05) was found, such that individuals reporting low levels of love and affection and high levels of abuse in childhood had the highest multisystem risk in adulthood.

Objectives: To examine whether perceptions of generativity predict the likelihood of increases in levels of impairment in activities of daily living (ADLs) or of dying over a 10-year period in older adults aged 60-75 from the Study of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS)., Method: Perceptions of generativity and current generative contributions as well as select sociodemographic, health status, health behavior, and psychosocial factors, assessed at a baseline exam, were examined as predictors of change in ADL disability level or mortality over the 10-year period between the baseline and follow-up waves of the MIDUS Study., Results: Greater levels of generativity and generative contributions at baseline predicted lower odds of experiencing increases in ADL disability (2 or more new domains of impairment; generativity odds ratio [OR] = 0.93 and generative contributions OR = 0.87), or of dying (generativity OR = 0.94 and generative contributions OR = 0.88), over the 10-year follow-up in models adjusted for sociodemographics and baseline health and disability. Associations remained relatively unchanged with the inclusion of different sets of health behavior and psychosocial variables in analytic models., Discussion: Findings indicate that greater perceptions of generativity are associated with more favorable trajectories of physical functioning and longevity over time in older adults.

Background: Outcomes in aging and health research, such as longevity, can be conceptualized as reflecting both genetic and environmental (nongenetic) effects. Parsing genetic and environmental influences can be challenging, particularly when taking a life span perspective, but an understanding of how genetic variants and environments relate to successful aging is critical to public health and intervention efforts., Methods: We review the literature, and survey promising methods, to understand this interplay. We also propose the investigation of personality as a nexus connecting genetics, environments, and health outcomes., Results: Personality traits may reflect psychological mechanisms by which underlying etiologic (genetic and environmental) effects predispose individuals to broad propensities to engage in (un)healthy patterns of behavior across the life span. In terms of methodology, traditional behavior genetic approaches have been used profitably to understand how genetic factors and environments relate to health and personality in somewhat separate literatures; we discuss how other behavior genetic approaches can help connect these literatures and provide new insights., Conclusions: Co-twin control designs can be employed to help determine causality via a closer approximation of the idealized counterfactual design. Gene-by-environment interaction (G × E) designs can be employed to understand how individual difference characteristics, such as personality, might moderate genetic and environmental influences on successful aging outcomes. Application of such methods can clarify the interplay of genes, environments, personality, and successful aging.

Although educational attainment has been consistently related to cognition in adulthood, the mechanisms are still unclear. Early education, and other social learning experiences, may provide the skills, knowledge, and interest to pursue intellectual challenges across the life course. Therefore, cognition in adulthood might reflect continued engagement with cognitively complex environments. Using baseline data from the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial, multiple mediation models were applied to examine the combined and unique contributions of intellectual, social, physical, creative, and passive lifestyle activities on the relationship between education and cognition. Separate models were tested for each cognitive outcome (i.e., reading ability, processing speed, memory). With the exception of memory tasks, findings suggest that education-cognition relations are partially explained by frequent participation in intellectual activities. The association between education and cognition was not completely eliminated, however, suggesting that other factors may drive these associations.

There is a growing interest in understanding how the experience of socioeconomic status (SES) adversity across the life course may accumulate to negatively affect the functioning of biological regulatory systems important to functioning and health in later adulthood. The goal of the present analyses was to examine whether greater life course SES adversity experience would be associated with higher scores on a multi-system allostatic load (AL) index of physiological function in adulthood. Data for these analyses are from 1008 participants (92.2% White) from the Biomarker Substudy of the Study of Midlife in the US (MIDUS). Multiple indicators of SES adversity in childhood (parent educational attainment, welfare status, financial situation) and two points in adulthood (educational attainment, household income, difficulty paying bills, availability of money to meet basic needs, current financial situation) were used to construct SES adversity measures for each life course phase. An AL score was constructed using information on 24 biomarkers from 7 different physiological systems (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cardiovascular, lipid metabolism, glucose metabolism, inflammatory immune activity). Analyses indicate higher AL as a function of greater SES adversity at each phase of, and cumulatively across, the life course. Associations were only moderately attenuated when accounting for a wide array of health status, behavioral and psychosocial factors. Findings suggest that SES adversity experience may cumulate across the life course to have a negative impact on multiple biological systems in adulthood. An important aim of future research is the replication of current findings in this predominantly White sample in more ethnically diverse populations., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Children raised in families with low socioeconomic status (SES) go on to have high rates of chronic illness in adulthood. However, a sizable minority of low-SES children remain healthy across the life course, which raises questions about the factors associated with, and potentially responsible for, such resilience. Using a sample of 1,205 middle-aged Americans, we explored whether two characteristics--upward socioeconomic mobility and early parental nurturance--were associated with resilience to the health effects of childhood disadvantage. The primary outcome in our analyses was the presence of metabolic syndrome in adulthood. Results revealed that low childhood SES was associated with higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome at midlife, independently of traditional risk factors. Despite this pattern, half the participants raised in low-SES households were free of metabolic syndrome at midlife. Upward social mobility was not associated with resilience to metabolic syndrome. However, results were consistent with a buffering scenario, in which high levels of maternal nurturance offset the metabolic consequences of childhood disadvantage.