Identifying Aging Adults' Housing Preferences: An Age-Friendly Initiative

Comparing Neighbors and Friends in Age-Related Network Changes

OBJECTIVES

To assess how the role of neighbors and friends in people's networks changes with age and how this is affected by cohort, marriage, employment, and socioeconomic status. The hypothesis is that for most aspects of the network, friends lose "importance" as people become older, with neighbors gradually becoming more dominant in the nonkin network.

METHODS

Data are used for people aged 55-90 between 1999 and 2019 from the Swiss Household Panel (N = 5,585). A total of 4 network aspects were measured: size, contact, practical support, and emotional support. Measures for neighbors and friends were compared and analyzed with fixed-effects and hybrid-effects regression models on person-year observations.

RESULTS

The sizes of both network segments declined with age but more strongly for friends than neighbors. Contact with friends was stable but contact with neighbors increased. Support from friends declined whereas support from neighbors was stable. Direct comparisons revealed that the relative share of neighbors vis-à-vis friends increased as people age. Friends were more common and supportive vis-à-vis neighbors for divorced and widowed people than for married people, but this gap declined with age. The share of neighbors increased with retirement, especially for men. The share of neighbors vis-à-vis friends was also larger for people with less income and education and this gap did not change with age.

DISCUSSION

In the nonkin part of older adults' networks, proximity eventually becomes dominant. This finding is interpreted in terms of rising needs, greater opportunity for local contact, and friend mortality risks, all favoring the neighbor segment of the network.

Comparing Older Parents' and Adult Children's Fear of Falling and Perceptions of Age-Friendly Home Modification: An Integration of the Theories of Planned Behavior and Protection Motivation

This study investigated how a fear of falling affects perceptions and behavioral intentions toward age-friendly home modification (AFHM) in older parents and adult children by integrating the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain AFHM decision-making processes and the protection motivation theory to explain the impact of a fear of falling on AFHM intention. The target population comprised older parents (≥75 years old) and adult children (45-64 years old) in Busan, South Korea (N = 600). The participants completed a self-administered questionnaire in March 2022. Independent t-test and path model analyses were conducted to compare primary constructs between older parents and adult children and analyze the relationships among a fear of falling, TPB components, and AFHM intention. Results showed that both groups had positive attitudes toward AFHM. However, adult children showed significantly higher rates of having a fear of falling, lower perceived behavioral control, and higher AFHM intention than older parents. The proposed research models were partially supported in the older-parent group and fully supported in the adult-children group. Adult children play a critical role in AFHM, along with older adults who are directly involved in an aging society. AFHM-supporting programs, including monetary and human-force assistance, education, related public advertisements, and an active AFHM market, should be expanded.