Depending on the age definition applied (e.g., chronologic, demographic, physiologic), a horse may be considered old at 15 years, 20 years, or even at an older age. The management of a horse is ...likely adjusted once it is considered old, however, details concerning these changes are currently sparse. Similarly, it is unclear at what age owners typically consider their horses to be old and why. To learn more about these and other topics related to older horses, a US-wide survey was conducted with owners of horses aged ≥ 15 years. The objectives of the present subsection of this survey were to 1) determine at what age horses were considered old by their owners, 2) identify the reasons for this decision, and 3) assess management changes made because the horse was considered old. The anonymous survey was distributed through social media and a press release and was online from Oct. 15th to Nov. 21st, 2020. 2717 of 2927 started surveys were eligible for analysis. Responses were received from all US states with southeastern states being most represented (38%; n = 2607). Data were analyzed descriptively with frequency counts expressed as percentages. Percentages amounted to maximally 100% for single-choice questions (s-c q.) but could exceed 100% for multiple-choice questions (m-c q.). All responses were discrete variables. At the time of the survey, about half (47.4%)of the participants considered their horse to be old (n = 2528 total responses to question; s-c q.). Most indicated to have first considered their horse old at an age of 20 (22.8%) or 25 years (14.1%) (n = 1181; s-c q.). Other ages were overall less commonly reported and hence grouped: < 15 years (1.0%), 15–19 years (24.0%), 21–24 years (22.4%), 26–30 years (13.9%), and > 30 years (1.9%). The top 3 reasons for considering their horses old were: 1) horse showed reduced ability to work/exercise (43.6%), 2) horse showed first signs of age-related disease/disorder (43.5%), 3) horse's hair turned gray/increase in gray hair (29.3%) (n = 1153; m-c q.). Ninety-one percent (90.6%) made changes to their horse's management once it was considered old (n = 1187; m-c q.). The top 3 changes were: 1) changed diet and/or supplements (65.9%), 2) exercised horse less intensely (31.3%), and 3) stopped riding/driving exercise (29.6%) (n = 1187; m-c q.). In conclusion, horses were often considered old at distinct ages (20 and 25 years), with changes in fitness level, health status, and physical characteristics (i.e., gray hair) reported as the main reasons. For almost all horses, management was adjusted once they were considered old, and changes mainly pertained to exercise regimen and diet.
This review provides policy recommendations on how to improve the Slovenian pension system, building on the OECD's best practices in pension design. It details the Slovenian pension system and ...identifies its strengths and weaknesses based on cross‑country comparisons.
This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the dose-response relationship between exercise and cognitive function in older adults with and without cognitive impairments. We included ...single-modality randomized controlled aerobic, anaerobic, multicomponent or psychomotor exercise trials that quantified training frequency, session and program duration and specified intensity quantitatively or qualitatively. We defined total exercise duration in minutes as the product of program duration, session duration, and frequency. For each study, we grouped test-specific Hedges' d (n = 163) and Cohen's d (n = 23) effect sizes in the domains Global cognition, Executive function and Memory. We used multilevel mixed-effects models to investigate dose-related predictors of exercise effects. In healthy older adults (n = 23 studies), there was a small positive effect of exercise on executive function (d = 0.27) and memory (d = 0.24), but dose-parameters did not predict the magnitude of effect sizes. In older adults with cognitive impairments (n = 13 studies), exercise had a moderate positive effect on global cognition (d = 0.37). For older adults with cognitive impairments, we found evidence for exercise programs with a short session duration and high frequency to predict higher effect sizes (d = 0.43-0.50). In healthy older adults, dose-parameters did not predict the magnitude of exercise effects on cognition. For older adults with cognitive impairments, exercise programs with shorter session duration and higher frequency may generate the best cognitive results. Studies are needed in which different exercise doses are directly compared among randomized subjects or conditions.
Notwithstanding the terrible price the world has paid in the Coronavirus pandemic, the fact remains that longevity at older ages is likely to continue to rise in the medium and longer term. This ...volume explores how the private and public sectors can collaborate via public-private partnerships (PPPs) to develop new mechanisms to reduce older people’s risk of outliving their assets in later life. As we show in this volume, PPPs typically involve shared government financing alongside private-sector partner expertise, management responsibility, and accountability. In addition to offering empirical evidence on examples where this is working well, our contributors provide case studies, discuss survey results, and examine a variety of different financial and insurance products to better meet the needs of the aging population. The volume will be informative to researchers, plan sponsors, students, and policymakers seeking to enhance retirement plan offerings.
This 2006 book introduces and develops the basic actuarial models and underlying pricing of life-contingent pension annuities and life insurance from a unique financial perspective. The ideas and ...techniques are then applied to the real-world problem of generating sustainable retirement income towards the end of the human life-cycle. The role of lifetime income, longevity insurance, and systematic withdrawal plans are investigated in a parsimonious framework. The underlying technology and terminology of the book are based on continuous-time financial economics by merging analytic laws of mortality with the dynamics of equity markets and interest rates. Nonetheless, the book requires a minimal background in mathematics and emphasizes applications and examples more than proofs and theorems. It can serve as an ideal textbook for an applied course on wealth management and retirement planning in addition to being a reference for quantitatively-inclined financial planners.
•The introduction of public pensions in the UK in 1909 reduced labor supply.•Despite the clear labor supply decline, the reform most likely increased welfare.•The behavioral response suggests that ...future pension reforms need to be profound.
We study the labor supply implications of the Old-Age Pension Act (OPA) of 1908, which, for the first time, provided pensions to older people in the UK. Using recently released census data covering the entire population, we exploit variation at the newly created age-based eligibility threshold. Our results show a considerable and abrupt decline in labor force participation of 6.0 percentage points (13%) when older workers reach the eligibility age of 70. To mitigate the impact of population aging today, pension reforms aimed at increasing elderly labor supply, however, have to induce much larger behavioral responses than the OPA.
Many government programs transfer resources to older people and implicitly or explicitly tax their labor. We shed new light on the labor supply and welfare effects of such programs by investigating ...the Old Age Assistance Program (OAA). Exploiting the large differences in OAA programs across states and Census data on the entire US population in 1940, we find that OAA reduced the labor force participation rate among men aged 65–74 by 8.5 percentage points, more than one-half of its 1930–1940 decline, but that OAA’s implicit taxation of earnings imposed only small welfare costs on recipients.
Objectives
Symptoms of insomnia are highly prevalent in the elderly. A significant number of pharmacological and non‐pharmacological interventions exist, but, up‐to‐date, their comparative efficacy ...and safety has not been sufficiently assessed.
Methods
We integrated the randomized evidence from every available treatment for insomnia in the elderly (>65 years) by performing a network meta‐analysis. Several electronic databases were searched up to May 25, 2019. The two primary outcomes were total sleep time and sleep quality. Data for other 6 efficacy and 8 safety outcomes were also analyzed.
Results
Fifty‐three RCTs with 6832 participants (75 years old on average) were included, 43 of which examined the efficacy of one or more drugs. Ten RCTs examined the efficacy of non‐pharmacological interventions and were evaluated only with pairwise meta‐analyses because they were disconnected from the network. The overall confidence in the evidence was very low primarily due to the small amount of data per comparison and their sparse connectedness. Several benzodiazepines, antidepressants, and z‐drugs performed better in both primary outcomes, but few comparisons had data from more than one trial. The limited evidence on non‐pharmacological interventions suggested that acupressure, auricular acupuncture, mindfulness‐based stress reduction program, and tart cherry juice were better than their control interventions. Regarding safety, no clear differences were detected among interventions due to large uncertainty.
Conclusions
Insufficient evidence exists on which intervention is more efficacious for elderly patients with insomnia. More RCTs, with longer duration, making more direct interventions among active treatments and presenting more outcomes are urgently needed.
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