Wicked Problems, Wicked Solutions
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Tag: Aging
Ph.D. Spotlight: Managing Midlife: How Gender and Sexuality Influence Midlife Perceptions of Decline and Progress
This dissertation investigates how gender and sexuality shape people's perceptions of aging in midlife. The study draws on two prominent narratives about aging discussed by aging studies scholars. The first narrative, decline, is a predominant aging narrative that constructs aging as an accumulation of irreversible losses. A second, less prevalent narrative constructs aging as progress—emphasizing the…
Policy Pub: The COVID-19 Effect: Tackling Racial, Economic, and Gender Inequity
This post is based on a webinar sponsored by Florida State University's College of Social Sciences and Public Policy. Crises have a way of shining a light on issues that tend to get ignored when things are going well. Crises also create oppertunity to reflect, to adapt, to push for more substantive, transformative change. The…
Ph.D. Spotlight: The Disablement Process of Aging United States Veterans.
Being that military service was a normative part of early adult life for today's older U.S. population, the number of veterans aged 60 and older in 2015 was estimated to be over 9.3 million. Older United States (U.S.) veterans are a population at risk for disability due to their early life experiences with military service…
Research Spotlight: How Does Advice to Women and Men Traveling Alone Reflect Gender Inequality?
Searching the internet has become almost a prerequisite for travel (though considerably fewer trips, of course, are happening during the pandemic). Online articles and blogs are appealing sources of information because they offer up-to-date travel advice, often drawn from personal experiences. Despite their widespread use, online travel articles have received surprisingly little research attention. Dr….
How to Fix the Nursing Home Crisis, Now and After the Pandemic
This piece first appeared in the Tampa Bay Times. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tens of thousands of deaths and more than three million infections, with predictions of many more to come. Nursing home residents have been among the most affected by the pandemic. In some states, half or more of all COVID deaths have…
Aging Today: Why are older adults especially vulnerable to financial exploitation and how common is it?
The audio from these scripts originally aired during WFSU's Aging Today segment. An early sign of cognitive impairment is difficulty managing money, making older people susceptible to scams or to financial abuse by family or friends. But even without cognitive impairment, the ability to judge trustworthiness can decline in later life, making older adults prey to false…
Aging Today: What is Lifelong Learning?
The script for this piece originally aired during WFSU's Aging Today segment. We tend to think of education as something we do early in life to prepare us for employment, but programs to give educational opportunities to older adults, often referred to as lifelong learning, have a different goal. Rather than taking courses to gain employment credentials,…
Aging Today: Why is Age Discrimination Hard to Prove?
This piece originally aired during WFSU's Aging Today segment. Age discrimination is illegal, but unfortunately, it's pervasive and hard to prove. More than 1 in 5 claims of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are based on age, yet just one percent result in a ruling of age discrimination. This low success rate…
Galentine's Day has become a thing – why hasn't Malentine's Day?
On Feb. 13, women will celebrate Galentine's Day, a holiday trumpeting the joys of female friendships. The holiday can trace its origins to a 2010 episode of "Parks and Rec," in which the main character, Leslie Knope, decides that the day before Valentine's Day should be an opportunity to celebrate the platonic love among women, ideally with…
Aging Today: Can We Count on Having Social Security in the Future?
This piece originally aired during WFSU's Aging Today segment. Social Security has been very successful in reducing poverty among older Americans. But the increasing number of recipients raises the specter that the system cannot be sustained. Economists estimate that without changing in financing, the average benefit will decrease 20% by 2030. Surveys report that at…
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