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The need to ensure the economic wellbeing and quality of life of those who reach the official retirement age is a matter of concern in the world of social services and in social policy making. Since some working older adults may be forced to retire when they reach the official retirement age while others retire voluntarily, the study is based on a dedicated survey among 508 persons who retired both willingly and unwillingly for good after reaching the official retirement age and 437 persons who continued working uninterruptedly. The findings show that the odds of staying on the job after retirement age are contingent on the socio-demographic and health-related characteristics of the older adult. Furthermore, the economic predictors of remaining in the labour force after retirement age depend on how strongly the older adult wishes to retire. Those who continue working after retirement age and those who retire willingly are undifferentiated in the level of financial support that they give others. Comparing older adults who continue working uninterruptedly with those who retire unwillingly, the chances of being among the former are higher among those who are better off before reaching retirement age. These results emphasise the need to extend welfare and financial-support policies to older adults who are forced to retire, in order to minimise the economic blow that this path to retirement causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though welfare states aim to address citizens' social care needs, disparities in benefit distribution persist, leading to "non-take-up." Non-take-up is the phenomenon in which people who may be eligible for a benefit fail to apply for it or forgo it after applying. Based on a qualitative approach, this study explores reasons for the non-take-up of social-security benefits and services in a convenience sample of 34 Israeli adults. The findings show that the reasons for non-take-up of social benefits and services may be divided into several interrelated levels. Four of the levels identified were identical to those suggested by the socio-ecological model: intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, and cultural, with multiple subthemes included in most of them. The policy level, which is integral to the theoretical model, does not emerge in this study. Theoretically, the findings show that the economic "rational trade-off model" does not suffice to explain the non-take-up phenomenon. Future research should expand the study of non-take-up of social benefits and services to potential, rather than actual, claimants of particular benefits or services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The experience of being sandwiched between support obligations towards both aging parents and adult offspring is likely to become more common and more relevant. We aim at assessing the effect of demographic and social sandwiching on the psychological health and subjective well-being of individuals experiencing these transitions, and to what extent, these effects vary across welfare regimes. Methods Data are from 63,585 individuals aged 50–75 participating in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We estimate within- and between-individual effects using hybrid regression models to predict depressive symptoms (EURO-D) and subjective well-being (control, autonomy, self-realization, and pleasure [CASP]). Results Among demographically sandwiched women, transitioning into social sandwiching and into supporting only parents was associated with a moderate but statistically significant increase in EURO-D and decline in CASP scores. The same association is not observed for male respondents. The pattern of variation among women living in countries characterized by different welfare regimes suggests that social sandwiching is less detrimental in Nordic regimes than in other welfare contexts. Discussion Results from the between-individuals part of the model indicate that there is a selection into social sandwiching of more healthy individuals into support roles. However, the within-individuals part of the model indicates that the transition into social sandwiching has a detrimental effect on women's (but not men's) psychological health and well-being. The explanations for this gendered effect of social sandwiching may be found in the "invisible" support provided by women and the gendered division of specific care tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]