Perceived age predicted worsening of health as described as mortality. Perceived age may indicate general well-being and faith in the future, potentially reflecting changes in health.

The purpose of this prospective study was to describe changes in subjective age over an 8-year period among community-dwelling people aged 65 to 84 years in Finland. At the baseline 1155 respondents met study criteria and 451 of these participated in the follow-up study. Participants described in years the age they felt themselves to be (feel age) and their preferred age (ideal age). Discrepancy scores relative to chronological age were calculated for feel age and ideal age. No significant mean-level changes were observed in the age discrepancy scores over the 8-year time frame. The baseline discrepancy between chronological and feel age remained constant among 48% of the participants, with 26% reporting a younger and 26% an older feel age. Similar patterns were observed in the discrepancy between chronological age and ideal age. The findings point both to stability and to individual variability in feel and preferred age identification over time in older adults.

A person-oriented approach was used in a study of age identification among community-dwelling older people. The study was based on 8-year follow-up data; 843 persons aged 65-84 were involved in the first phase of the study, and 426 persons aged 73-92, in the second phase. Loosely, on the basis of the distinction between successful, usual, and pathological aging (Rowe & Kahn, 1987, 1997), participants were grouped according to their self-ratings of cognitive and physical functioning as "Positive," "Negative," and "Others." Participants possessing at least 4 out of the 5 criteria used as indicators of successful aging in the study (no illness or injury presenting problems in daily life, no health problems imposing limitations on hobbies, self-rated cognitive functioning better than satisfactory, age-comparative functional capacity as good, and no signs of depression) were assigned to the "Positive" group. The results showed these individuals typically to have a more youthful age identity, indicated by a lower feel age and thus a lower subjective age-perception score, lower mental, physical, and look ages, and a less frequently reported sense of age weighing on them. Moreover, this group reported a higher ideal age and had a chronological age satisfaction score closer to 0, suggesting higher satisfaction with chronological age. Also a tendency to set the onset of old age later and a willingness to live to 100 years of age were features that were more characteristic of the "Positive" than the other groups. The findings, supported by multivariate analyses, were in line with those of previous variable-oriented studies on age identification, suggesting that an association exists between perceptions of personal aging and physical and psychological well-being.

This study examined perceptions of age among Finnish males and females in three age groups; twenty-five to thirty-nine-year-olds (n = 446), forty to fifty-four-year-olds (n = 482) and fifty-five to sixty-four-year-olds (n = 427). The age perceptions of the Finnish sample were further compared with those of a North-American sample with corresponding age groups (n = 169, n = 187, n = 222) reported by Barak, Stern, and Gould (1988). Four age concepts used were chronological age, subjective age, ideal age, and disparity age. As expected on the basis of previous studies in age identification, no difference was found between Finnish males and females in terms of subjective age. Ideal age, however, differentiated Finnish males and females; the age ideal of females was significantly higher when compared with males with respective chronological ages. The comparison between Finnish and North-Eastern U.S. sample indicated that the latter group had more youthful age identity while the Finns expressed a greater acceptance of their present age status. This was seen in higher subjective and ideal ages of Finns when compared with their North-American counterparts. Socio-cultural differences in terms of meanings associated with chronological age and aging are discussed.

The main aim of this study was to assess perceptions of and satisfaction with retirement among 1,686 recently retired people from 6 European Union countries. The authors compared their responses to a set of questions taken from the Retirement Satisfaction Inventory (F. J. Floyd et al., 1992). The first significant result was that Belgian, British, Finnish, French, and Spanish retirees all expressed very similar assessments of life satisfaction, whereas Portuguese retirees expressed a lower level of satisfaction. The 2nd result was that the major determinants of overall satisfaction in the 6 countries were (a) health and resources and (b) anticipated satisfaction. Finally, the data revealed that cultural background only accounted for a limited amount of variance in overall satisfaction with retirement.