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Objectives: This paper examines the gender gap in unhealthy life expectancy across education levels and age in Spain to understand the extent to which the gender paradox exists over education and across ages. Methods: Death registrations and vital status were taken from the Spanish Statistical Office, while the three health measures (chronic conditions, bad-self rated health and cognitive impairment) from the 2019 European Health Interview Survey. We used Sullivan’s method to compute unhealthy life expectancy by education level. We computed the gender and the education ratios of the proportion of unhealthy life years in each health measure by education and age. Results: At almost all ages and all education levels, women significantly lived longer but in poorer health than men. Marked gender differences are seen across most age-groups, particularly among the low educated. We detected greater health inequalities by education level for women (confirming the gender paradox) and a health gradient due to aging and across the health measures charting the disablement process. Conclusion: The new education distribution might improve the unhealthy life expectancy and might reduce the gender gap in the number of years spent in poor health. The authors acknowledge funding from different sources. AS-A acknowledges funding from the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University. PZ acknowledges funding by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC) at the University of Essex (ES/S012486/1), and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RTI2018- 096730-B-I00). ER acknowledges funding from the Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad, Subprograma Estatal de Formación y en el Subprograma Estatal de Incorporación: Ayudas para Contratos Ramón y Cajal 2017 [grant number RYC-2017-22586], and was supported by the H2020-ERC-2019-CoG-GA No 864616- HEALIN Project and from CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya. ML acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, National R&D; I Plan QUALYLIFE (PID2019-111666RJ-I00), GLOBFAM (RTI2018-096730-B-I00) and COMORHEALTHSES (PID2020-113934RB-I00); and support from CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya.

Objectives Several studies have shown that retired older adults volunteer more than their working counterparts. However, there is a lack of research detecting whether the transition to retirement increases the frequency of volunteering over time and the extent to which this potential effect of retirement varies between sociodemographic groups.Methods We used seven waves of data from the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, collected between 2011 and 2018 from 19 countries. Within-person (or panel fixed-effect) regression models, which considered individual variations and person-specific changes over time, were conducted.Results Transition to retirement over time was associated with an increased frequency of volunteering among older Europeans. In addition, transition to retirement was more strongly associated with volunteering in countries with higher overall rates of volunteering, among more highly educated individuals, and among more religious people.Discussion Our findings supported the impact of time substitution and the centrality of social norms in shaping individual behavior. However, we were unable to find support for an influence of social tie replacement. Overall, transition to retirement tends to open up new ways to organize everyday life and increases the time spent volunteering among older Europeans.

Grandparental child care is an important form of intergenerational support. This article explored first time whether the transition to retirement affects the amount of grandchild care that European grandparents provide to their descendants. The association between entry into retirement and grandchild care was studied using the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe conducted in 16 countries and four regimes: Southern Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, and Eastern Europe. Data collected in five waves between 2004 and 2015 were utilized. We ran panel fixed-effect regression models, which consider individual’s variation and person-specific changes over time, providing a test for causality in the associations between retirement and grandchild care. Transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care among both grandmothers and grandfathers. Grandmothers more often looked after grandchildren than grandfathers, but entry into retirement increased grandchild care more among grandfathers than grandmothers. Transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care in all parts of Europe, but the magnitude of the effect was strongest in Southern Europe, followed by Northern Europe, Central Europe, and Eastern Europe, respectively. This study indicated that when the role conflict as grandchild caregivers and employees disappears, the amount of grandchild care older Europeans provide to their descendants increased. The fact that at retirement older adults have more time resources to provide informal family support should be carefully acknowledge in policymaking and discussions considering the societal role of older people.

Evolutionary theory posits that grandparents can increase their inclusive fitness by investing in their grandchildren. This study explored whether the transition to retirement affected the amount of grandchild care that European grandparents provided to their descendants. Data from five waves of the longitudinal Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe collected between 2004 and 2015 from 15 countries were used. We executed within-person (or fixed-effect) regression models, which considered individual variations and person-specific changes over time. It was detected that transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care among both grandmothers and grandfathers. However, the effect of retirement was stronger for grandfathers than for grandmothers. Moreover, transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care among both maternal and paternal grandparents, but there was no significant difference between lineages in the magnitude of the effect of transition to retirement on grandchild care. In public debate retirees are often considered a burden to society but the present study indicated that when grandparents retire, their investment in grandchildren increased. The findings are discussed with reference to key evolutionary theories that consider older adults' tendency to invest time and resources in their grandchildren.

Objective: This study examines health care utilization of immigrants relative to the native-born populations aged 50 years and older in eleven European countries. Methods. We analyzed data from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from 2004 for a sample of 27,444 individuals in 11 European countries. Negative Binomial regression was conducted to examine the difference in number of doctor visits, visits to General Practitioners (GPs), and hospital stays between immigrants and the native-born individuals. Results: We find evidence those immigrants above age 50 use health services on average more than the native-born populations with the same characteristics. Our models show immigrants have between 6% and 27% more expected visits to the doctor, GP or hospital stays when compared to native-born populations in a number of European countries. Discussion: Elderly immigrant populations might be using health services more intensively due to cultural reasons.

The COVID-19 pandemic has limited individuals’ possibility to meet and socialize with others due to the state of emergency restrictions to movements, events and relations imposed in different countries. Most shops and restaurants have been closed and some economic activities have been seriously damaged. This significant disruption may have contributed to a deterioration of people’s mental health on top of other negative consequences of the pandemic. To better understand the indirect consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak on people’s lives we have designed the intergen-COVID online survey (https://sites.google.com/unifi.it/intergen-covid), carried out in France, Italy and Spain between the 14th to the 24th of April 2020. Quota sampling on the population 18-plus and post-stratification weights were used to achieve the alignment between the sample (N = 9,056) and the total population on important socio-demographic characteristics.We collected information on four key domains of individuals’ lives: intergenerational (and other type of) relationships (physical and non-physical; means of communication; frequency, etc.); living arrangements; mental health; events experienced during the lockdown (e.g., income loss, death of relative/friend due to COVID-19, worsened partner relationships, time spent with family); intentions for the future 3 years (e.g., fertility, living parental home, marriage, cohabitation, divorce/separation, retirement). In this paper we provide the main results from this survey, focusing on the first three domains abovementioned. The fourth domain consists of questions applicable to different sub-groups of the population and will be analyzed in separate papers. We show that, despite the general reduction of physical contacts, with low educated people reporting a lower reduction in all kinds of physical contacts, non-physical contacts have significantly increased, especially among women. About 50% of respondents felt sad or depressed more often than usual during the lockdown, but mental health deterioration was found to be heterogeneous and vary with respondents’ age, gender and country. Job and income loss, and worsening of relationships quality were other negative consequences often experienced during the lockdown, especially by younger individuals. Finally, although maintaining physical distance, during the lockdown people have experienced a high level of social connection, emotional support and practical help.

Resumen Objetivo Explorar desde una perspectiva de género la asociación con la salud subjetiva de la interacción del nivel educativo y la tipología de hogar en el marco de los determinantes sociales de la salud (DSS) en los niveles micro y mezzo. Método Los datos utilizados proceden de la muestra española de la Encuesta Europea de Condiciones de Vida para el año 2014. La asociación entre la interacción de ambos DSS con la salud autopercibida se ha analizado mediante modelos de regresión logística separados para mujeres y hombres. El modelo con la interacción se ha contrastado con el modelo aditivo para evaluar las posibles ventajas. Resultados El modelo para la interacción muestra una reducción o incluso la desaparición de los efectos negativos sobre la salud de aquellas tipologías de hogar asociadas con una peor salud cuanto mayor es el nivel educativo, mostrando especificidades propias para cada sexo. Conclusiones Los perfiles de mala salud de mujeres y hombres se dibujan de manera más precisa al combinar ambos DSS. Entre las mujeres se confirma el papel destacado que ambos DSS tienen para entender sus desigualdades en salud. Entre los hombres, sobre todo aquellos con menor nivel educativo, la interacción destapa una mayor importancia del hogar como DSS. De este modo se podrán diseñar políticas públicas más efectivas para disminuir las desigualdades tanto de género como de salud. Abstract Objective To explore from a gender perspective the association with subjective health of the interaction between education and household arrangements within the framework of social determinants of health placed at the micro and mezzo levels. Methods The data comes from the Spanish sample of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for 2014. Independent logistic regression models for men and women were run to analyze the association with subjective health of the interaction between education and household arrangements. An additive model was run to assess possible advantages over the interaction approach. Results The interaction models show a lower or even no significant effect on health of household arrangements usually negatively associated with health among individuals with high education, displaying specific patterns according to sex. Conclusions Health profiles of women and men are more precisely drawn if both social determinants of health are combined. Among the women, the important role was confirmed of both social determinants of health in understanding their health inequalities. Among the men, mainly those with low educational achievement, the interaction revealed that the household was a more meaningful social determinant of health. This could enable the definition of more efficient public policies to reduce health and gender inequalities.

Table S2 Odds ratio of poor self-perceived health of the interaction between education and household arrangements from the pooled logistic regression model for middle-aged Europeans (30–59 years old) by gender. This file contains the results from the model that confirms the statistical significance of the interaction between education and household arrangements for women and men separately. (DOCX 17 kb)

Table S4 Odds ratio of poor self-perceived health from the pooled logistic regression model for middle-aged Europeans (30–59 years old). This file confirms the significant difference between the estimates across the five European regions as well as between women and men. (DOCX 15 kb)

Table S1 Odds ratio of poor self-perceived health of the interaction between education and household arrangements from the pooled logistic regression model for middle-aged Europeans (30–59 years old). This file confirms the statistical significance of the interaction between education and household arrangements for the whole working sample. (DOCX 15 kb)

Table S3 Odds ratio of poor self-perceived health for the interaction between education, household arrangements and gender from the pooled logistic regression model for middle-aged Europeans (30–59 years old). This file shows the results from the triple interaction between education, household arrangement and gender. (DOCX 15 kb)

Table S5 Odds ratio of poor self-perceived health for middle-aged population (30–59 years old) by country cluster and gender This file contains the complete estimates of all models included in the Results section. (DOCX 16 kb)