Given the widespread use of technology in most occupations, one important issue concerns how the influx of technology will affect jobs for older workers and employment opportunities and the productivity for them. This issue is particularly important for today’s cohort of older workers, as they have not had the same exposure to technology that younger people have had. However, despite cohort differences, technology will continue to be a pertinent issue for future generations of older adults, as technology is dynamic and continuing to develop at an unprecedented rate. (more…)

Older Person Care

• Older persons should benefit from family and community based care and protection in accordance with each society’s system of cultural values.
• Older persons should have access to health care to help them to maintain or regain the optimum level of physical, mental, and emotional well-being and to prevent or delay the onset of illness.
• Older persons should have access to social and legal services to enhance their autonomy, protection, and care.
• Older persons should be able to utilize appropriate levels of institutional care providing protection, rehabilitation, and social and mental stimulation in a humane and secure environment.
• Older persons should be able to enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms when residing in any shelter, care, or treatment facility, including full respect for their dignity, beliefs, needs, and privacy, and for the right to make decisions about their care and the quality of their lives.

Older Person Independence

• Older persons should have access to adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, and health care through the provision of income, family and community support, and self-help.
• Older persons should have the opportunity to work or to have access to other income-generating opportunities.
• Older persons should be able to participate in determining when and at what pace aging work withdrawal from the labor force takes place. (more…)

Common beliefs about older workers include beliefs that they are physically unable to do their job; have a high rate of absenteeism; have a high rate of accidents; are less productive, less motivated, and less receptive to innovations than younger people; and are unable to learn. While these are rather commonly held beliefs, there are few actual data to support these assumptions; in fact, most research studies indicate that these stereotypes are inaccurate. (more…)

Creativity is most often defined as the individual capacity to generate ideas that are both original and useful. In everyday life there are numerous solutions to problems that work just fine but are totally routine, such as a motorist’s decision to take an alternate route to the grocery store when an automobile accident blocks the habitual route. Of course, the two defining components of creativity—originality and utility—are not discrete characteristics—there are varying degrees of these elements in a creative idea. (more…)