Cox regression models examined associations between 17 indicators of psychological functioning (intellectual abilities, personality, subjective well-being, and social relations) and mortality. The sample (N = 516, age range 70-103 years) comprised participants in the Berlin Aging Study assessed between 1990 and 1993. By 1996, 50% had died. Eleven indicators were identified as mortality risk factors at the zero-order level and six when age was controlled. Low perceptual speed and dissatisfaction with aging were uniquely significant after controls for age, SES, health, and the 16 other psychological factors. Low intellectual functioning was a greater risk for individuals aged 70-84 years than for the oldest old (over 85 years). The effects of psychological risk factors did not diminish over time. Future research should focus on the mechanisms and time frames that underlie the death-relatedness of intellectual functioning and self-evaluation.

Most individuals experience a decline in health status during old age. Paradoxically, there are proposals that older adults nevertheless maintain a positive sense of well-being, an indicator of successful aging. Data from the Berlin Aging Study (BASE: Baltes & Mayer, 1999), a locally representative sample of men and women aged 70 to 100+ (N = 516, M = 85 years), suggest that cumulative health-related chronic life strains set a constraint on the potential of oldest old individuals to experience the positive side of life. The young old in BASE reported significantly higher positive SWB than did the oldest old. Chronic illness and functional

This study tested the hypothesis that time spent on social activities (i.e., in direct interaction with others) and time spent in social contexts (i.e., while others are present) is associated with survival in persons aged 70 and older. An observational study with mortality follow-ups was carried out in the former West Berlin, Germany (Berlin Aging Study). The sample was stratified by age and sex, and consisted of 473 persons aged 70 to 103 years. Social activity and social context measures were assessed in 1990-1993 by structured interviews in the participants' homes. Cox regression was used to model survival from time of interview. The main outcome measure was survival on 1 August 2003. Time spent on social activities was revealed as a predictor of survival only in analyses that did not control for confounding factors. In contrast, time spent in context "with friends" was significantly related to increased survival (relative risk=0.76, 95% confidence interval 0.59 to 0.99) even after several confounding factors were controlled for. This study suggests that time spent with friends affords a survival advantage among older adults, above and beyond the effects of other leisure activities. Future research on social participation and survival may benefit from an examination of the interaction between activity content and social context.

Objectives-The study was conducted to examine sex differences in the initial level and rate of change in physical function and grip strength.Method-The baseline survey included 2,262 Danes born in 1905 and alive in 1998 and followedup in 2000, 2003, and 2005. Hence, the authors fully used the power of having a cohort with multiple assessments in late life and virtually complete follow-up of lifespan (through December 2008). Latent growth curve modeling was used.Results-Men had higher initial levels and rates of decline in strength score and grip strength. Lifespan was positively correlated with intercepts and slopes.Discussion-The Danish data suggested that the longest-living individuals have higher initial levels of strength score and grip strength and smaller rate of change. The data further suggested that the initial level of strength score and grip strength was more predictive of mortality than the rate of change was, and the predictive effects were similar in men and women. Keywords sex; activities of daily living; grip strength; oldest old; mortality; growth-curve analysis; Denmark Empirical evidence accumulated over recent decades revealed an apparent contradiction between health and survival of men and women (Case & Paxson, 2005;Nathanson, 1975;Waldron, 1985). Women enjoy a longer life than men in almost all countries of the world (Barford, Dorling, Smith, & Shaw, 2006), but women tend to report poorer self-rated health (Bambra et al., 2008;Olsen & Dahl, 2007), have higher disability levels at all ages (Arber & Cooper, 1999;Leveille, Penninx, Melzer, Izmirlian, & Guralnik, 2000), and perform more poorly on physical tests than men (Frederiksen et al., 2006;Jeune et al., 2006).It has been suggested that handgrip strength is better than chronological age in predicting the frailty of people (Syddall, Cooper, Martin, Briggs, & Sayer, 2003). Several studies have found that grip strength is predictive of disability among middle-aged men (Rantanen et al., 1999), as well as older persons (Giampaoli et al., 1999). Others have demonstrated that grip strength Corresponding Author: Anna Oksuzyan, Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health, J. B. Winslows Vej 9B, 5000 Odense C, Denmark, aoksuzyan@health.sdu.dk. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Aging Health. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 October 12. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript predicts all-cause, cardiovascular (CVD), and cancer mortality among men, but it ceased to predict mortality among elderly women in multivariate analyses (Fujita et al., 1995;Gale, Martyn, Cooper, & Sayer, 2007).Previous research proposed that many physiological functions begin to decline around 30 years (Sehl & Yates, 2001) and that the course of the decline accelerates with increasing age (Bassey, 1998;Forrest, Zmuda, & Cauley, 2005;Forrest, Zmuda, & Cauley, 2007;. The median loss ...

Recent trends in German life expectancy show a considerable increase. Most of this increase has resulted from decreasing mortality at older ages. Patterns of oldest old mortality (ages 80+) differed significantly between men and women as well as between East and West Germany. While West German oldest old mortality decreased since the mid 1970s, comparable decreases in East Germany did not become evident until the late 1980s. Yet, the East German mortality decline accelerated after German reunification in 1990, particularly among East German females, attesting to the plasticity of human life expectancy and the importance of late life events. Medical care, individual economic resources and life-style factors are discussed as potential determinants of the decline in old age mortality in Germany.