Steptoe, A;
Jackson, SE;
(2018)
The Life Skills of Older Americans: Association with Economic, Psychological, Social, and Health Outcomes.
Scientific Reports
, 8
, Article 9669. 10.1038/s41598-018-27909-w.
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Steptoe et al. 2018 - The life skills of older Americans - association with economic, psychological, social, and health outcomes.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Studies of children and adolescents indicate that success in life is determined in part by attributes such as conscientiousness, emotional stability and sense of control, independently of childhood socioeconomic status and cognitive ability. Less is known about the role of these characteristics at older ages. This study investigated the relationship of fve life skills – conscientiousness, emotional stability, persistence, optimism and sense of control – with a range of outcomes in 8,843 participants (mean age 72.57 years) in the Health and Retirement Study, a representative study of older Americans. More life skills were associated with greater wealth and income, better emotional wellbeing, stronger social relationships, less loneliness, better health, fewer chronic illnesses and impaired activities of daily living, better mobility and less obesity, after controlling for childhood socioeconomic status and current cognitive ability. Longitudinally, more life skills predicted emotional wellbeing, less loneliness and more prosocial behavior, better health and mobility over a 4 year period. Associations were independent of gender, ethnicity, family background, education and cognitive ability. The number of attributes was important rather than any single life skill. Life skills continue to matter at advanced ages, and fostering these characteristics in older adults may pay dividends in terms of later life health and wellbeing.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Life Skills of Older Americans: Association with Economic, Psychological, Social, and Health Outcomes |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-018-27909-w |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27909-w |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10051817 |
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