Suchergebnisse

Data from 2 national surveys conducted annually of representative samples of US high school & college students (since 1975 & 1965, respectively) are drawn on in an attempt to clarify: (1) the nature of recent trends in goals & values, (2) possible effects of these trends on personal plans & attitudes, & (3) the causes of trends in life goals. Findings show a shift in values from the early 1970s through 1986/87. Private materialism increased greatly, while personal self-fulfillment declined sharply. At the same time, goals related to family life increased modestly in importance, while public interest concerns decreased modestly. Accompanying this shift in values was a change in young people's college major & career plans toward those leading to higher-paying jobs in large corporations & away from those with opportunities for self-fulfillment or public service. Also found were a retreat from political involvement, & a conservative shift in political beliefs. The causes of the shift appear to be linked to the impact on the values of the US population in general of declining real wages & rising material aspirations in the post-1973 period. 7 Tables, 6 Figures, 51 References. AA

Analyzes 1974-86 opinion polls, concluding that the shift reflects similar changes of attitudes among adults, ultimately caused by fluctuations in the US economy since 1973.

Health conditions in United States cities at the turn of the twentieth century were very poor. Bleak pictures of crowded dwellings, contaminated water supplies, and filthy streets have been painted by numerous observers of urban areas at the time (Smith, 1964). While the effects of these conditions on mortality levels have not been precisely measured, urban mortality rates were consistently higher than rural mortality rates in 1900 in the United States (Condran and Crimmins, 1980). Nevertheless, considerable variation in the mortality levels of different cities also existed. Our goal in this article is to explain the variation in the mortality conditions in U.S. cities for which death registration data were collected in 1900. The analysis is done in two stages. First, the causes of death which accounted for the different mortality levels are isolated. Second, a multivariate analysis of the factors affecting the rates of occurrence of these causes of death is performed.

Abstract
Past research suggests that resilience to health hazards increases with age, potentially because less resilient individuals die at earlier ages, leaving behind their more resilient peers. Using lifetime cigarette smoking as a model health hazard, we examined whether accelerated epigenetic aging (indicating differences in the speed of individuals' underlying aging process) helps explain age-related resilience in a nationally representative sample of 3,783 older U.S. adults from the Health and Retirement Study. Results of mediation moderation analyses indicated that participants aged 86 or older showed a weaker association between lifetime cigarette smoking and mortality relative to participants aged 76–85 and a weaker association between smoking and multimorbidity relative to all younger cohorts. This moderation effect was mediated by a reduced association between smoking pack-years and epigenetic aging. This research helps identify subpopulations of particularly resilient individuals and identifies epigenetic aging as a potential mechanism explaining this process. Interventions in younger adults could utilize epigenetic aging estimates to identify the most vulnerable individuals and intervene before adverse health outcomes, such as chronic disease morbidity or mortality, manifest.

Life expectancy has long been seen as an indicator of the quality of life as well as the health of a population. Recent trends in US life expectancy show growing inequality in life expectancy for some socioeconomic and geographic groupings but diminishing inequality by race and gender. For example, while African Americans had gains in life expectancy, non-Hispanic white women with low levels of education experienced drops. Overall, the United States continues to fall behind other countries in terms of life expectancy. One reason is our growing mortality in midlife from so-called deaths of despair. Public health programs cannot eliminate these adverse trends if they are not also accompanied by social policies supporting economic opportunity for US families.

Si de nombreuses études sont consacrées aux tendances de l'incapacité dans la population américaine âgée, rares sont celles qui s'intéressent à l'incapacité des personnes d'âge moyen et des jeunes retraités. Dans cette étude, nous examinons les tendances de l'incapacité sévère telle que mesurée par le besoin d'aide pour effectuer des activités élémentaires et instrumentales de la vie quotidienne (respectivement AVQ et AIVQ) chez les Américains de 50 à 69 ans. Sur la base des national health interview surveys , menées aux États-Unis de 1997 à 2006, nous observons une augmentation de la dépendance pour ces activités, en particulier chez les sujets les plus jeunes de cette tranche d'âge. Les femmes, les personnes âgées, les obèses et ceux qui ont peu fréquenté l'école ont davantage besoin d'aide pour les AVQ et les AIVQ. Cependant, ni l'augmentation du niveau d'instruction ni celle de l'obésité pour cette tranche d'âge sur les dix années étudiées n'expliquent les tendances.