Oliver Huxhold

• Doctor of Psychology
• Senior Researcher at German Centre of Gerontology

Decades of research show that although adults’ social networks tend to shrink with age, the proportion of closest ties stays relatively constant and older adults rate their relationships as more positive. However, little research has examined with whom adults actually interact on a daily basis and the nature of those interactions. We used hierarchi...

Societal crises have profound effects on various life domains. So far, the literature has focused on the effects of crises on financial security or health. Effects on social integration, i.e., social relationships and social participation, have received little attention, despite of their relevance for physical and mental health. The COVID-19 pandem...

Being socially integrated is essential for maintaining health and well-being in late adulthood. Although life course sociology and lifespan psychology have emphasized the influence of contextual conditions on different aspects of social integration for a long time, the majority of studies on social relationships in late life have focused on differe...

Background Studies from Europe indicate an increase in social support exchanges among older adults, but whether this trend also applies to the US and the perception of these exchanges as positive or negative remains unclear. Furthermore, it’s uncertain if these changes also benefit those that face disadvantage, such as low income and racial minorit...

Background and Objectives This study investigates whether the association between supplementary grandchild care and grandparents’ subjective well-being—measured as life satisfaction, perceived stress, and loneliness—is moderated by the contextual environment. We use the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic as an example of contextual differences...

The exit from the workforce and the transition to retirement often coincides with changes in important aspects of individuals’ daily life and social roles. This can be a demanding experience for some retirees, affecting their mental health. It is thus important to identify relevant psychosocial, health, and financial predictors of adjustment qualit...

Spousal bereavement is associated with health declines and increased mortality risk, but its specific impact on physical and cognitive capabilities is less studied. A historical cohort study design was applied including married Tromsø study participants ( N =5739) aged 50–70 years with baseline self-reported overall health and health-related factor...

Our personality develops over the whole lifespan and in particular when our life circumstances change. Retirement is a life event that brings changes in identity, day structures, and social roles of former workers. Therefore, it may affect personality traits such as the Big Five (neuroticism, extraversion, intellect, conscientiousness, and agreeabl...

Our personality develops over the whole lifespan and in particular when our life circumstances change. Retirement is a life event that brings changes in identity, day structures and social roles of former workers. Therefore, it may affect personality traits such as the Big Five (neuroticism, extraversion, intellect, conscientiousness, and agreeable...

Objectives: From a theoretical point of view, older adults may not necessarily face a greater of risk becoming lonely than middle-aged adults but are more likely at disadvantage at fighting loneliness. Therefore, in this study we differentiate between the risk of becoming lonely and the risk of remaining lonely. Methods: A large longitudinal dat...

Objectives: Recent trends, such as changes in pension systems or cohort differences in individual resources, have altered the face of retirement transitions. Little is known about how these trends have affected older people's life satisfaction around retirement age in the past decades. In this study, we investigated how levels and changes in life...

After March 2020, Corona virus containment measures significantly impaired the social relationships of many people. Against this background, this chapter examines how the perception of loneliness of people aged 46 to 90 changed during the first lockdown. The results are compared with those of 2014 and 2017.KeywordsLonelinessSocial relationshipsGerm...

Before vaccinations against the Corona virus were widely available for at-risk groups, older people were a particular focus of infection protection. Due to the higher risk of severe disease, contact between grandchildren and grandparents was discouraged. At the same time, families required extra support due to closed schools and day-care centres. T...

This report, based on data from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS), investigates the role of the corona pandemic for the quality of partnerships of people in the second half of life. Main questions adressed are: 1. What changes in perceived partnership quality were seen for people in the second half of life during the Covid-19 pandemic? 2. How do chan...

Little is known about historical shifts in subjective age (i.e., how old individuals feel). Moving beyond the very few time-lagged cross-sectional cohort comparisons, we examined historical shifts in within-person trajectories of subjective age from midlife to advanced old age. We used cohort-comparative longitudinal data from middle-age and older...

Report basiert auf Daten des Deutschen Alterssurveys (DEAS) • Die Corona-Pandemie ist mit einer temporären Verschlechterung der wahrgenommenen Partnerschaftsqualität von Menschen in der zweiten Lebenshälfte einhergegangen. Bis zum Winter 2020/21 hat sich die Situation für Paare wieder verbessert. • Die wahrgenommene Partnerschaftsqualität von Mensc...

Perceived social exclusion refers to the subjective feeling of not being part of the macrolevel society. Loneliness arises if existing social relationships at the micro level are either quantitatively or qualitatively perceived as deficient. Here, we conceptualize and empirically demonstrate that both experiences are distinct but related constructs...

Since digitalisation alters occupational task profiles via automation processes, job quality is also likely to be affected. While existing literature mainly focusses on objective job quality, this study asks if and how digitalisation is associated with employees' subjective job quality in the second half of working life in Germany. Analyses are bas...

Objectives Recent trends, such as changes in pension systems or cohort differences in individual resources, have altered the face of retirement transitions. Little is known about how these trends have affected older people’s life satisfaction around retirement age in the past decades. In this study, we investigated how levels and changes in life sa...

Empirical evidence about the development of social relationships across adulthood into late life continues to accumulate, but theoretical development has lagged behind. The Differential Investment of Resources (DIRe) model integrates these empirical advances. The model defines the investment of time and energy into social ties varying in terms of e...

Digitale Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien gewinnen in nahezu allen öffentlichen und privaten Lebensbereichen an Bedeutung. Etwas mehr als die Hälfte der freiwillig Engagierten verwenden das Internet im Rahmen ihrer freiwilligen Tätigkeit. Seit 2009 ist dieser Anteil kaum gestiegen. Die digitale Spaltung zeigt sich auch im Kontext des fr...

Given substantial cohort differences in psychosocial functioning, for example in perceived control, and ongoing pension reforms, the context of retirement has changed over the last decades. However, there is limited research on the consequences of such developments on historical differences in subjective well-being in the retirement transition. In...

The context of retirement has changed over the last decades, but there is little knowledge on whether the quality of retirement adjustment has changed as well. Changes in retirement regulations and historical differences in resources may affect the quality of adjustment and increase inequalities between different socioeconomic groups. In the presen...

Bevor Impfungen gegen Covid-19 für Risikogruppen in breitem Umfang angeboten und wahrgenommen werden konnten, standen insbesondere ältere Menschen im Fokus des Infektionsschutzes. Aufgrund des höheren Risikos eines schweren Krankheitsverlaufs wurde z. B. von Kontakten zwischen Enkelkindern und Großeltern abgeraten. Gleichzeitig benötigten Familien...

Given substantial cohort differences in psychosocial functioning, for example perceived control, and ongoing pension reforms, the context of retirement has changed over the last decades. However, there is limited research on the consequences of such developments on historical differences in subjective well-being in the retirement transition. In the...

The empirical evidence concerned with the centrality of social relations to individual functioning across adulthood continues to accumulate. Theoretical development about age-related changes in social relationships, however, has lagged behind. In particular, existing theories either do not account for the influence of the developmental context, or...

In recent years many studies have shown that adults with more positive self-perceptions of aging (SPA) increase their likelihood of aging healthily. Other studies have documented historical changes in individual resources and contextual conditions associated with aging. We explored how these historical changes are reflected in birth-cohort differen...

The nature of retirement has been constantly changing over the last decades. Retirement transitions of later-born cohorts differ from those of earlier-born cohorts in terms of sociocultural context and timing. In addition, today’s retirees differ from those who retired earlier in historical time, for example with respect to gender composition, soci...

The internet is an indispensable aspect of modern society. It facilitates long distance communication, access to information, health care interventions, as well as multiple opportunities for social participation. Despite increasing pervasiveness of this technology, persistent inequalities exist in who has access to the internet. In particular, olde...

Objectives: Partnership status is a central predictor of loneliness. The strength of this predictive relationship, however, may decrease in the course of aging and over historical time. Moreover, there may be aging-related and historical changes in the satisfaction with partnership and singlehood. Method: Longitudinal data from the German Ageing...

Die Corona-Pandemie macht eine Kontaktsperre notwendig. Die negativen sozialen und vor allem wirtschaftlichen Folgen dieser Strategie sind jedoch auf Dauer erheblich. Aus diesem Grund wird in der letzten Zeit wiederholt argumentiert, viele der Maßnahmen, die auf eine soziale Isolation abzielen, zukünftig auf Risikogruppen zu konzentrieren. In der ö...

Historically, family ties have been understood as the primary source of support for aging adults, and past empirical and theoretical work has highlighted the tendency of older adults to focus on close family. However, in line with demographic changes and historical increases in the diversity of social structures, friendships are increasing in impor...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine dynamic links between changes in social ties and changes in emotional well-being. Method: Trivariate dual-change score models were used to test whether a large number of close ties would be more strongly associated with low levels of depressed affect than a large number of weaker ties, and a l...

Objective: Positive perceptions of aging are known to have beneficial effects for older adults' health and well-being, but less is known regarding their social correlates. The current study aimed to disentangle the bi-directional associations of perceptions of aging with informal and formal social involvement. Methods: Data for this study came f...

Well-being in retirement is thought to depend on person’s level of resources and how his or her resources change during retirement. However, to date few studies have directly investigated resource trajectories during retirement. The current study therefore examines how economic, personal, and social-relational resources change during the retirement...

The role of historical change for individual functioning and development has long been a central feature of life span psychological and life course sociological theory. However, the mechanisms underlying how historical change in contexts shapes individual functioning and development are less well understood. To better understand such open questions...

For a long time, life span psychologists have theorized that individual development is partially shaped by an everchanging historical context. For example, it has been hypothesized that the historically increasing flexibility of constructing social networks may influence the social development of adults into late life. To date, however, there is no...

The internet provides an indispensable platform for social interaction, entertainment and everyday tasks. Especially older adults might benefit from staying engaged online to counteract loneliness. Yet, current research on how internet use effects loneliness still paints a contradictory picture. The current study investigates the longitudinal influ...

The purpose of this study was to examine links between changes in social ties (close ties and weaker ties) and changes in positive and depressed affect across three waves in a large, representative sample of U.S. adults aged 40 and over (N = 802). Using trivariate dual-change score models, we found that a greater number of weaker ties was associate...

Die Risiken sozialer Isolation und Einsamkeit sind unterschiedlich hoch und entwickeln sich mit dem Älterwerden im Verlauf der zweiten Lebenshälfte verschieden: Während das Isolationsrisiko zwischen dem 40. und 90. Lebensjahr relativ kontinuierlich von vier auf 22 Prozent steigt, verläuft das Einsamkeitsrisiko u-förmig. Vom Alter 40 bis Mitte 60 si...

Partnership status is a central predictor of loneliness. The strength of this predictive relationship, however, may decrease in the course of aging and over historical time. Moreover, there may be aging-related and historical changes in the satisfaction with partnership and singlehood.Longitudinal data from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) assessed...

Having friends at older ages has been shown to be particularly beneficial for maintaining high subjective well-being. Moreover, due to the historically decreasing numbers of family ties, being able to preserve strong bonds with friends in old age may become increasingly more important for future generations. This study examined historical trends in...

Contemporary societal views on old age raise the question whether patterns of stability or decline in network size apply to later birth cohorts of older adults. Change score models are estimated to determine cohort differences in age-related trajectories in network size. Cohorts 1928–37 and 1938–47, 55–64 at baseline in 1992 and 2002 of the Longitu...

The absence of a partner has been shown to be a strong risk factor for loneliness in older adults. However, being single may have lost some of its stigma in recent decades. Furthermore, friends nowadays fulfill social functions formerly almost exclusively associated with romantic partners. Therefore, being single may have become less strongly assoc...

We examine the association between pathways to retirement and patterns of subjective well-being in Germany. We argue that short-term development of subjective well-being is related to social status changes while long-term development of subjective well-being is related to resources and changes in life circumstances. Importantly, we expect that how...

Research shows that people maintain fewer social ties and social activities when they grow older. There appears, however, to be little variation in the average loneliness level from middle adulthood into old age. In this study we investigate to what extent beneficial changes in emotional qualities of the social network (SNW; number of distressing r...

Objectives: Contextual influences of the living environment on the social integration of adults has been primarily studied cross-sectionally. Here, we argue that context (i.e., urban vs. rural environment) as well as changes in context (i.e., population decline) are potentially important for the development of social integration across middle adul...

Objectives: Contemporary societal views on old age as well as a rise in retirement age raise the question whether patterns of stability and/or decline in network size as found in earlier studies similarly apply to later birth cohorts of older adults. Methods: Change score models are estimated to determine cohort differences in age-related trajec...

Loneliness is a stressful experience that appears to interfere with health and social integration (SI). Recently, researchers proposed that both antecedents and consequences of loneliness may change across the life span. To fully understand the processes related to loneliness it may thus be crucial to adopt an age-differentiated perspective. This s...

Freiwilliges Engagement ist fest eingebunden in ein breites Spektrum sozialer Beziehungen und anderer sozialer Aktivitäten (Morrow-Howell, Hong & Tang 2009). Die Gesamtheit der individuellen sozialen Kontakte, des persönlichen Netzwerkes und gemeinschaftlicher Unternehmungen wird in der Literatur häufig unter den Begriffen soziale Integration oder...

Werte oder Werthaltungen werden in der Literatur als Prinzipien verstanden, an denen Menschen situationsübergreifend ihr Handeln ausrichten oder auch im Nachhinein rechtfertigen (Schwartz & Bilsky 1987, 1990; Welzel 2009). Im Gegensatz zu Motiven, die häufig als Begründungen für eine konkrete Verhaltensweise angesehen werden, wirken Werte allgemein...

Wenn Menschen sich dauerhaft isoliert oder ausgeschlossen fühlen, kann dies gravierende Konsequenzen in unterschiedlichen Lebensbereichen haben. Anhaltende Gefühle der Isolation können nicht nur mit depressiven Symptomen (Cacioppo, Hughes, Waite, Hawkley, & Thisted 2006b) sondern auch mit gesundheitlichen Beeinträchtigungen und einer erhöhten Morta...

Familiale Beziehungen sind eine wesentliche Quelle für soziale Integration, Lebensqualität und Wohlbefinden über den gesamten Lebenslauf hinweg. Die Bindungen zu den eigenen Kindern und Enkeln gehören dabei zu den engsten sozialen Beziehungen älter werdender Menschen (Rossi & Rossi 1990). Sie vermitteln Gefühle von Zugehörigkeit, Intimität und Sinn...

Soziale Beziehungsnetzwerke sind eine zentrale Voraussetzung für Zufriedenheit, Sicherheit und persönliches Wachstum (Baumeister & Leary 1995). Sie erfüllen nicht nur grundlegende Bedürfnisse nach Zugehörigkeit und Wertschätzung, sondern sind auch Quelle für Unterstützung, Wissen und neue Perspektiven sowie für positive Erlebnisse im Rahmen gemeins...

Objectives: Perceived control may promote social activity in older adults because individuals with greater perceived control have greater confidence in their ability to achieve outcomes and are more likely to choose difficult activities, show persistence, and employ strategies to overcome challenges. Cross-sectional research has linked perceived co...

Objectives Retirement is a critical life event accompanied by profound changes in life circumstances to which people have to actively adapt. Two important dimensions for the success of adjustment are health and activity. Therefore, we examined developments of physical health and leisure activity over the first 12-years of retirement and their bi-di...

Previous studies have demonstrated that while health factors lose importance for the individual conceptualization of self-rated health (SRH) with advancing age, subjective well-being (SWB) factors gain in importance. The present study examined whether this age-related pattern differs between educational groups. Longitudinal data of adults aged 40 y...

Previous studies have shown that some predictors of self-rated health (SRH) become more important with age, while others become less important. Although based on cross-sectional data, these findings are often interpreted as age-related changes in evaluation criteria. However, results could be due to cohort effects as well. We attempted to disentang...

The effect of retirement on life satisfaction is a research topic that received a lot of attention, yet provided heterogeneous results. The current study suggests a remedy for this situation by taking two predictors of diversity (i.e. education and last labor market status) into account. We assumed that changes in social status and changes in resou...

This study investigated age differences in longitudinal effects of volunteering on three facets of subjective well-being (SWB), i.e. positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), and life satisfaction (LS). Both direct and indirect effects with self-efficacy as mediator were tested. Longitudinal structural equation modeling was used on 5,564 particip...

Objectives. Research on the influence of relationships with grandchildren on older adults’ subjective well-being (SWB) has been sparse. Moreover, empirical results differ between studies. We examined whether grandparents’ relationships with adolescent and adult grandchildren were associated with four aspects of SWB among grandparents and contrasted...

Objectives: Friendships contribute uniquely to well-being in (late) adulthood. However, studies on friendship often ignore interindividual differences in friendship patterns. The aim of this study was to investigate such differences including their predictors. Method: The study builds on Matthews's qualitative model of friendship styles. Matthew...

Objectives: It has been considered a fact that informal social activities promote well-being in old age, irrespective of whether they are performed with friends or family members. Fundamental differences in the relationship quality between family members (obligatory) and friends (voluntary), however, suggest differential effects on well-being. Fur...

This study investigated the interacting dynamics of different aspects of the social network, specifically network structure (size and frequency of contact), social activity engagement, and emotional support, and different aspects of health and subjective well-being in a representative sample of 2034 older adults across 6 years of development. The a...

BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS: In the current paper, it is analyzed whether the extent of loneliness of adults in the second half of their lives has changed between 1996 and 2008 in Germany. Because patterns of objective social integration have evolved differently in different birth cohorts (familial integration in earlier birth cohorts more fr...

This study analyzes how often grandparents in Germany interact with their grandchildren aged 16 and over. It takes a three-generation perspective and explores the individual contribution of every generation involved in the association between grandparents and grandchildren (grandparents, children and grandchildren). The analyses are based on cross-...

This is the first book to take a sociological approach to grandparenting across diverse country contexts and combines new theorising with up-to-date empirical findings to document the changing nature of grandparenting across global contexts.

Grandparenting in the 21st century is at the heart of profound family and societal changes. It is of increasing social and economic significance yet many dimensions of grandparenting are still poorly understood. Contemporary Grandparenting is the first book to take a sociological approach to grandparenting across diverse country contexts and combin...

Hintergrund und Fragestellung Es wird untersucht, ob sich zwischen 1996 und 2008 das Ausmaß von Einsamkeit bei den Menschen in der zweiten Lebenshälfte gewandelt hat. Da sich objektive Kriterien sozialer Integration in verschiedenen Geburtskohorten unterschiedlich verändert haben (z. B. familiäre Integration bei jüngeren Geburtskohorten fragiler, b...

Generell ist die Depression ein Thema von großer gesellschaftlicher Relevanz. Die Lebenszeitprävalenz von depressiven Störungen liegt in Deutschland derzeit bei ca. 20 Prozent (Beesdo & Wittchen 2006), d. h. etwa ein Fünftel der Bevölkerung erkrankt daran. Depressionen ziehen nicht nur per se große Beeinträchtigungen im Leben nach sich, wie zum Bei...

Altersbilder umfassen sowohl gesellschaftliche als auch individuelle Sichtweisen auf die Lebensphase Alter und auf den Prozess des Älterwerdens.

The importance of socioeconomic status (SES) for psychological functioning over the life span is increasingly acknowledged in psychological research. The Reserve Capacity Model by Gallo and Matthews (2003) suggests that SES is not only linked to physical health but also to the experience of positive and negative emotions. Moreover, due to different...

Postural control performances of 18 younger and 18 older adults were repeatedly measured on 45 weekdays with five trials per day. This design made it possible to dissociate between long-term trends and processing fluctuations in the sensorimotor domain at moment-to-moment, trial-to-trial, and day-to-day levels. Older adults fluctuated more than you...

This study examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) determines the degree to which psychological and social resources such as optimistic self-beliefs and social support affect health. We used data from the representative German Ageing Survey (N = 2,454, aged 40-85 years). Structural equation modeling was employed to examine whether relationships...

This paper examines the associations between different forms of support, who provides the support and the wellbeing of older adults in Germany. Particular attention is paid to the wellbeing differences associated with kin and non-kin providers and with emotional support and instrumental support. In addition, the quality of relationships with kin an...

This study examined social inequalities in health in the second half of life. Data for empirical analyses came from the second wave of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS), an ongoing population-based, representative study of community dwelling persons living in Germany, aged 40-85 years (N = 2,787). Three different indicators for socioeconomic status (...

Die Ergebnisse unserer Analysen zeigen, dass die gängige alterssoziologische Interpretation des Zusammenhangs zwischen Wohnentfernung und Kontakthäufigkeit der Eltern zu ihren erwachsenen Kindern als Effekt unterschiedlicher räumlicher Gelegenheitsstrukturen nicht die ganze Wahrheit erzählt. Zwar beeinflusst die räumliche Nähe zweifellos die Häufig...

In der letzten Zeit hat die Untersuchung des Verhältnisses zwischen Körper und Geist im Alter in der internationalen Forschung erheblich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Übereinstimmend weisen die meisten Studien darauf hin, dass der Zusammenhang zwischen Sensomotorik und Kognition im Laufe des Erwachsenenalters zunimmt. Die Ursachen hierfür sind komplex. Di...

Research on cross-domain couplings between sensorimotor and cognitive functions in older adults has gained momentum during recent years. Results of most studies point to increasing interdependencies between the two functional domains with advancing adult age. The causes of this increase are complex and show dynamic interactions across adult develop...

Adult age differences in cognitive plasticity have been studied less often in working memory than in episodic memory. The authors investigated the effects of extensive working memory practice on performance improvement, transfer, and short-term maintenance of practice gains and transfer effects. Adults age 20-30 years and 70-80 years practiced a sp...

Postural control in everyday life is generally accompanied by posture-unrelated cognitive activity. Thus, mild forms of dual-tasking postural control are the norm rather than the exception. Based on this consideration and available evidence, we propose and empirically examined, in young and old adults, a non-monotonic, U-shaped relation between the...

We review four broad lines of research on couplings between sensorimotor and cognitive aging, with an emphasis on methodological concerns. First, correlational cross-sectional and longitudinal data indicate increasing associations between sensorimotor and cognitive aspects of behavior with advancing age. Second, older adults show greater performanc...

Within-person, across-time variations in processes and performance are intrinsic to all aspects of human functioning. This article starts with a brief taxonomy of intraindividual dynamics. There are adaptive as well as non-adaptive types of intraindividual variations that unfold with different degrees of reversibility on different time scales and i...