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This article uses data from focus groups to examine how older nonmetropolitan residents of upstate New York construct their transportation arrangements during different stages of the life course. The article also analyzes the effectiveness of different modes of transportation in facilitating life-maintenance and higher order needs of older individuals. Almost universally, youngold (age 65 to 74) rural residents drive themselves to most of their activities; a small proportion also use public buses to fill some of their transportation needs. Old-old (age 75 and older) individuals, by necessity, rely on a wider range of transportation options because of driving cessation among some in this group. The focus groups allowed older participants to speak for themselves regarding what they liked and disliked about different transportation options, thus providing findings that policy makers and transportation planners might use for designing transportation systems that meet the needs of older rural and small-town residents.As the United States becomes an increasingly older society, the safety and mobility of older persons, the primary and alternative modes of transportation used by and available to them, and the effectiveness of different modes of transportation in helping older persons maintain their independence will become increasingly important. Between 1990 and 2030, the population aged 65 and older is projected to more than double in size (Siegel, 1993). Large and increasing numbers and proportions of older people will result in increasing numbers and proportions of older drivers. Moreover, with the increasing numbers and proportions of oldest-old (aged 85 and older), older Downloaded from individuals are more likely to reach a point where the cessation of driving and a search for alternative means of transportation are necessary. With continuing rapid increases in the numbers and proportions of older people, it behooves researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to plan for the transportation needs of current and future older cohorts.Effective transportation arrangements contribute to older persons' social integration by facilitating social interaction, community participation, and access to goods and services (Glasgow, 1998). Especially among older rural residents, activities are often too distant to reach by walking, and older rural people risk social isolation if they do not have effective transportation arrangements. The general analytical framework guiding this research is that rural older persons construct their transportation arrangements in a variety of ways depending on their personal characteristics, life stage, the nature of their social networks, and the attributes of their communities.According to Rosenbloom (1988), rural older people make almost 90% of their trips in private vehicles, although not necessarily as the driver. This information is useful, but it does not tell us how and why older rural residents construct their transportation arrangements as they do. The present study analyzes qualitativ...

The importance of participation in voluntary formal associations for enhancing health is supported by four kinds of evidence. (1) Seven prospective studies of social relations and mortality show the independent effect of formal social participation, net of informal ties. (2) Conceptual analysis demonstrates that voluntary formal associations constitute a separate class of social causation. (3) Our factor analysis of data from a sample of 629 nonmetropolitan elderly identified two types of formal social participation: "instrumental," as in associations that are community oriented, and "expressive," as in those that exist for the benefit of the members. (4) Regression analysis showed that the instrumental participation factor is linked, net of controls, to the perceived health of both men and women, whereas the expressive factor predicts for women only.

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The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of different residential environments on informal and formal caregiving provided to older people. The author uses two kinds of evidence to address this central concern. First, recent demographic trends are examined to ascertain the availability of informal caregivers among older people living in different places of residence. This line of inquiry focuses on the supply of potential caregivers. Second, previous research on rural/urban patterns of informal and formal caregiving for older people is reviewed. In conjunction with these two lines of inquiry, the author discusses past, present, and future trends in aging and caregiving. Because little direct evidence exists with which to examine particular aspects of rural/urban patterns of caregiving, the author discusses needed areas of future research.

Population aging is being experienced by many rural communities in the U.S., as evidenced by increases in the median age and the high incidence of natural population decrease. The implications of these changes in population structure for the daily lives of the residents in such communities have received little attention. We address this issue in the current study by examining the relationship between population aging and the availability of service-providing establishments in the rural U.S. between 1990 and 2010. Using data mainly from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we estimate a series of fixed-effects regression models to identify the relationship between median age and establishment counts net of changes in overall population and other factors. We find a significant, but non-linear relationship between county median age and the total number of service-providing establishments, and counts of most specific types of services. We find a positive effect of total population size across all of our models. This total population effect is consistent with other research, but the independent effects of age structure that we observe represent a novel finding and suggest that age structure is a salient factor in local rural development and community wellbeing.

M offatt S. and G lasgow N. How useful is the concept of social exclusion when applied to rural older people in the United Kingdom and the United States?, Regional Studies . This paper explores the now widespread use of the concept ';social exclusion' in the United Kingdom and examines why discourses of social exclusion have not been used in the United States. The relationship between social exclusion and poverty is critically applied to rural older people, a group only recently appearing in debates about social exclusion in the UK. Despite extensive debates about social exclusion in the UK, it is shown that state-provided income programmes are crucial to reducing poverty among older people and that data to indicate progress on addressing any of the more relational aspects of social exclusion are largely insufficient.

This article seeks to identify factors associated with the formation and development of nonmetropolitan destinations for older in‐migration, thereby explaining why some U.S. counties are more likely than others to be nonmetro retirement destinations. We contend that most nonmetro retirement destinations are established and developed over time through a path‐dependent process. When amenities are commodified as recreation and tourism, migration streams tend to be established that ultimately produce sustained in‐migration of older persons to selected destination communities. We use data from a variety of official sources and a spatial statistics methodology to examine intercounty variability in net migration rates at ages 60–74. Our findings are consistent with the aforementioned path‐dependent development framework. Counties with a long history of population growth, previous experience attracting older in‐migrants, attractive natural amenities, and a developed recreation and tourism industry are those most likely to be retirement‐age migration destinations. In contrast, agricultural heartland and relatively large population size are associated with lower rates of older in‐migration. Older in‐migration should be seen as neither a panacea for strapped rural communities nor a “pensions and care issue.” Older migrants can be “gray gold,” but they can also pose challenges, such as possibly increased demand for public services as they age in place.