Life skills play a key role in promoting educational and occupational success in early life, but their relevance at older ages is uncertain. Here we measured five life skills-conscientiousness, emotional stability, determination, control, and optimism-in 8,119 men and women aged 52 and older (mean 66.7 y). We show that the number of skills is associated with wealth, income, subjective wellbeing...

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men were used to estimate economic inequality within three 5-year cohorts as they moved from midlife to later life. The Gini index of inequality increased steadily after age 59, supporting the hypothesis that within-cohort inequality increases in late life. However, a transition analysis found considerable mobility in relative status for indiv...

We investigated the connection between wisdom-related performance, personality, and generativity to further the understanding of how they are interrelated. Our sample consisted of 163 men and women 68-77 years of age, mostly White, and predominantly middle class. Wisdom was assessed with the performance-based Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, with the remaining measures being mostly self-report. As hypot...

This paper uses the US Health and Retirement Study to explore linkages between neighborhood conditions and stages of the disablement process among adults aged 55 years and older in the United States. We consider multiple dimensions of the neighborhood including the built environment as well as social and economic conditions. In doing so, we use factor analysis to reduce indicators into eight ne...

Few studies have examined the effects of both prenatal and postnatal growth on hypertension. We report on hypertension in 2003 people aged 62 years who were randomly selected from the Helsinki birth cohort and examined in a clinic. Their heights and weights had been recorded serially up to age 11 years. A total of 644 had already been diagnosed with hypertension. Compared with normotensive peop...

CONTEXT The prevalence of depression in later life increases with plasma total homocysteine concentration (tHcy). High tHcy accounts for about 15% of prevalent cases, but observational studies are prone to confounding and bias. Genetic association studies are not prone to the same sources of error and offer an opportunity to explore the consistency and external validity of this association. O...

Over the last century, there has been a rapid decrease in the incidence of many infectious diseases. Over the same period, the prevalence of several noninfectious diseases, e.g. obesity, type-2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, has increased dramatically to the point that we are facing an epidemic of noncommunicable diseases. These diseases are clearly observed more frequently in ‘rich’ cou...

Suicide rates are higher in later life than in any other age group. The design of effective suicide prevention strategies hinges on the identification of specific, quantifiable risk factors. Methodological challenges include the lack of systematically applied terminology in suicide and risk factor research, the low base rate of suicide, and its complex, multidetermined nature. Although variable...

Recent findings suggest that coronary heart disease and stroke, and the associated conditions, hypertension and non-insulin dependent diabetes, originate through impaired growth and development during fetal life and infancy. These diseases may be consequences of 'programming', whereby a stimulus or insult at a critical, sensitive period of early life results in long-term changes in physiology o...