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Older people consume less alcohol than any other adult age group. However, in recent years survey data on alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom have shown that while younger age groups have experienced a decline in alcohol consumption, drinking behaviours among the elderly have not reduced in the same way. This paper uses data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing to analyse both the frequency and quantity of older adult's alcohol consumption using a lifecourse approach over a ten-year period. Overall drinking declined over time and the analysis examined how socio-economic characteristics, partnership, employment and health statuses were associated with differences in drinking behaviours and how these changed over time. Higher wealth and level of education were associated with drinking more and drinking more frequently for men and women. Poorer self-rated health was associated with less frequent consumption and older people with poor and deteriorating health reported a steeper decline in the frequency of alcohol consumption over time. Men who were not in a partnership drank more than other men. For women, loss of a partner was associated with a steeper decline in drinking behaviours. These findings have implications for programmes to promote responsible drinking among older adults as they suggest that, for the most part, characteristics associated with sustaining wellbeing in later life are also linked to consuming more alcohol. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ageing in place has been promoted by policy makers as the optimal residential solution for later life, premised on older people's reluctance to contemplate relocation, their declining residential mobility and high levels of residential satisfaction. This paper takes a critical perspective to the notion of ageing in place by examining older people's dislikes about, rather than levels of satisfaction with their home and neighbourhood environments, and establishing whether such dislikes influence a desire to move. Analysis of the 2004 Living in Wales Survey shows that despite high levels of residential satisfaction, a significant proportion of older people do wish to move. Logistic regression results indicate this desire is strongly associated with dislikes about their immediate home environment, more than neighbourhood factors. Contemplating a move in later life may be shaped more by a desire to ‘attach’ to people, than to remain in situ to preserve an attachment to place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the provision of information to, and seeking of information by, patients newly diagnosed with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) in primary care. Background: PMR is an inflammatory rheumatological condition of older people that can be treated with long-term oral glucocorticoids. Management usually requires the patient to understand the potential complications of treatment and the disease, as well as involvement in reducing treatment dose. This may be complex for patients to understand. Method: Data are taken from the baseline phase of the PMR Cohort study, which recruited newly diagnosed patients with PMR from UK primary care. Participants provided information on their PMR symptoms, general health and sociodemographics. They also completed items regarding information provision by their doctor at diagnosis, its usefulness and their own search for information. Findings: A total of 652 people responded to the baseline survey. In all, 399 (62.7%) had received written information from their doctor; 237 (98%) found it useful; 265 (42.9%) would have liked more information; and 311 (48.4%) sought out more information. Those who were not given information and did not seek it out tended to be older and have poorer internet access. Information provided at diagnosis to patients with PMR is useful, but more than a third did not receive any. This is concerning when PMR requires self-management and vigilance for red flags. Doctors should make use of the resources already available to them to support patients and should specifically ensure that these are available to more elderly patients and those without internet access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The WHO encourages the virtual elimination of artificial trans-fatty acids (TFA), which increase CHD risk. Our UK analysis explores whether voluntary reformulation results in differential TFA intakes among socio-economic groups by determining characteristics of high TFA consumers before and after product reformulation.Design: Food intake was collected by 7d weighed records pre-reformulation and 4d diaries post-reformulation. Sociodemographic characteristics of TFA consumers above the WHO limit, and of the top 10 % of TFA consumers as a percentage food energy, were compared with those of lower TFA consumers. Multivariate logistic regression determined independent socio-economic predictors of being a top 10 % consumer.Subjects: UK National Diet and Nutrition Surveys (NDNS) for adults aged 19-64 years pre-reformulation (2000/01; N 1724) and post-reformulation (2010/11-2011/12; N 848).Results: Post-reformulation 2·5 % of adults exceeded the WHO limit, v. 57 % pre-reformulation. In unadjusted analyses, high TFA consumption was associated with lower income, lower education and long-term illness/disability pre- but not post-reformulation. In adjusted pre-reformulation analyses, degree holders were half as likely as those without qualifications to be top 10 % consumers (OR=0·51; 95 % CI 0·28, 0·92). In adjusted post-reformulation analyses, those with higher income were 2·5-3·3 times more likely to be top 10 % consumers than lowest income households. Pre-reformulation, high consumers consumed more foods containing artificial TFA, whereas ruminant TFA were more prominent post-reformulation.Conclusions: High TFA consumption was associated with socio-economic disadvantage pre-reformulation, but evidence of this is less clear post-reformulation. Voluntary reformulation appeared effective in reducing TFA content in many UK products with mixed effects on dietary inequalities relating to income and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from household surveys have increasingly been used as a basis for social policy. They are generally inappropriate for obtaining information about the poorest, and therefore for policies concerned with tackling poverty and deprivation. They omit certain groups by design: the homeless; those in institutions; and mobile, nomadic or pastoralist populations. In addition, in practice, they typically under-represent those in fragile, disjointed or multiple occupancy households, those in urban slums and those in areas deemed as insecure. These sub-groups constitute a pretty comprehensive, ostensive definition of the ‘poorest’.The sources of worldwide estimates of the missing populations are briefly described, with those for the UK discussed in greater detail, paying attention to their likely income and wealth. At least 250 million of the poorest of the poor are omitted worldwide; and in the UK about half a million of the poorest are missing from survey sample frames.In the UK, these ‘missing’ population sub-groups bias the analysis of income inequalities and affect the validity of formulae that have been developed for the geographical allocation of resources to health and social care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the association between mothers’ involvement in paid employment when their children are young and their later employment prospects. Using 17 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1997–2007), it examines the employment trajectories of 954 women for the decade after the birth of their youngest child, asking two main questions. Do mothers who enter or return to work tend to remain in employment? And do wages and job satisfaction further down the line (when the youngest child reaches ten years old) reflect the pathway taken? The article focuses in particular on differences between women with higher- and lower-level qualifications. Mothers are found to be following a variety of employment pathways, with instability relatively common: more than one in three move in and out of work over the period, and this movement is just as common among mothers with higher levels of qualifications as among those with only GCSE-level qualifications or none at all. A stable – and longer – work history is associated with increased wages later on, but the benefits are greater for women with higher levels of qualifications, as might be predicted by human capital theory. Women who were more highly qualified and who moved in and out of work over the decade had an hourly wage when their youngest child was ten which was 31 per cent lower than similar women with a stable work history; for women with few or no qualifications the corresponding figure was 10 per cent and statistically insignificant. For both groups, job satisfaction at the end of the decade was unrelated to the pathway taken. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Life-course socioeconomic factors may have a role in dementia aetiology but there is a current paucity of studies. Meta-analyses of individual participant data would considerably strengthen this evidence base.Aims: To examine the association between socioeconomic status in early life and adulthood with later dementia death.Method: Individual participant meta-analysis of 11 prospective cohort studies (1994-2004, n = 86 508).Results: Leaving full-time education at an earlier age was associated with an increased risk of dementia death in women (fully adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for age ≤14 v. age ≥16: HR = 1.76, 95% CI 1.23-2.53) but not men. Occupational social class was not statistically significantly associated with dementia death in men or women.Conclusions: Lower educational attainment in women was associated with an increased risk of dementia-related death independently of common risk behaviours and comorbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]