Support and Engagement
Asynchronous Session
Joy and Hardship: Older Adults using Food Pantries in the US
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Madonna Harrington Meyer, Winston Scott
In 2022, 9% of US households with adults ages 65 and older were food insecure (Rabbit et al. 2023). Moreover, 22% of older adults experience food insecurity at some point in their 60s and 70s (Levy 2022). Roughly 7% of all US households augment their food supplies by going to food pantries (Coleman-Jensen and Rabbitt 2021). Among all households with low food security, 36% go to food pantries and among all households with very low food security 45% go to food pantries (Coleman-Jensen and Rabbitt 2021). Food pantry users have continued to age since the Great Recession of 2008-9; by 2020, 15% of all older adults received food from food pantries (Heflin and Harrington Meyer forthcoming). Based on in-depth interviews with a national but non-random sample of 63 adults ages 60 and older with incomes below 130% of the federal poverty line, I found that food pantries vary markedly. Many of my respondents reported great satisfaction with their food pantries. Satisfactions included an abundance of healthy fresh food, free household and personal supplies, connections to other social services, and volunteering at food pantries in exchange for food. However, many reported great challenges as well, including lack of fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats, food that is about to expire, food that adversely affects health, poor transportation and mobility, administrative burden, and long waits to get food. Policy solutions draw on the upcoming book, Food for Thought: Understanding Older Adult Food Insecurity, by Colleen M. Heflin and Madonna Harrington Meyer.
Together for a Caring Society: A Toolkit to Better Support Intergenerational Action at the Community Level
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Johanne Filiatrault, Samuel Turcotte, Mélissa St Pierre Bolduc, Ana Ines Ansaldo, Nathalie Bier, Sébastien Grenier, Shannon Hebblethwaite, Marie-Ève Lamontagne, Melanie Levasseur, Emilie Raymond, Chantal Viscogliosi, Claudine Lemieux, Fatima Ladjadj
Intergenerational activities (IgA) implemented at the community level are promising strategies to promote older adults’ well-being and combat ageism. In Quebec (Canada), hundreds of community organizations, and other settings such as schools, libraries, and seniors’ residences are involved in IgA. Despite their vitality, these settings have expressed a crucial need for tools to help them plan, implement and evaluate intergenerational initiatives. Consequently, our research team and Intergénérations Québec (a national organization whose mission is to bring generations closer together) with nine other key partners joined their forces to co-develop and assess a toolkit to support intergenerational practice. The toolkit was developed through a participatory action research program that included: 1) scoping reviews on the effects of IgA and the conditions for their successful implementation; 2) a survey among 139 community settings to explore their needs for support; 3) the consultation of 98 stakeholders involved in the intergenerational field regarding the prototype of the toolkit; and 4) a study of the acceptability of the final toolkit conducted among 15 potential users. The research process led to the development of a toolkit that showed good acceptability among potential users. All participants expressed high satisfaction towards the toolkit and an intention to use it in their respective setting. These positive outcomes most certainly reflect the success of the partnership approach followed throughout the research project, recognizing the value of combining scientific and field expertise to create innovations that meet the needs of practice settings.
Robots, ICT and Aging: How Do Advanced Technologies Interact with Aging
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hongyan Lu
This paper investigates whether introducing high technologies affect the impact of population aging on productivity. We examine the interactions between age-skill labor groups and high-tech capital represented by ICT and industrial robots in 12 OECD countries from 2008 to 2020 through country-industry fixed effects. From sector-level data analysis, we find that ICT adoption reduces the productivity contribution of mid-aged workers, while robot adoption enhances the contribution of high-skilled workers. When considering ICT and robot adoption, simultaneous adoption benefits lowerproductivity worker groups, thus narrowing the productivity gap between different ageskill groups. Moreover, using two-digit level manufacturing data, we observe that the combined effect of high-skilled mid-aged workers on productivity remains negative, with a larger magnitude than that observed in sector-level analysis. We suggest governments and firms consider this group's adaptability when introducing high technologies and provide appropriate training programs to support them.
Featured Community-based Dementia Care and the Inclusion of People with Dementia in Nigeria
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ellis Onyedikachi George
The experiences of people with dementia are not limited to neurological issues, but also significantly include aspects influenced by mundane social interactions contained in everyday life. Yet, dementia scholarship in Nigeria focuses predominantly on neurological and biomedical concerns. While research on social aspects of dementia, such as care, is on the increase in Nigeria, most draw on the views of carers without including the perspectives of people with dementia. This study uses the perspectives of people with dementia and family and community members to illustrate the community’s role in the inclusion of people with dementia. The study draws on data collected during fieldwork in a low-income community in Nigeria, including interviews conducted with seventeen persons with dementia and other community members, and fieldnote entries. Three main themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the manually coded data, illustrating 1) the dis/advantages of communal infrastructures, 2) how communal care arrangements influence inclusion, and 3) the role of communal beliefs in the inclusion/exclusion of people with dementia. The results revealed ways in which the rural, compound-based, and collectivised nature of the community facilitates access to relationships, care, and other resources for community members with dementia. In contrast, the precarity of primarily filial-based non-structural care, the inaccessible nature of houses and roads in the community, and karmic beliefs around dementia and care pose exclusionary challenges to community members, especially those physically disabled or with no connections to their children. Consequently, the study recommends structural yet contextualised and inclusive dementia care frameworks in Nigeria.
