Want to be smarter? More focused? Free of memory problems as you age? If so, don’t count on brain games to help you.
That’s the conclusion of an exhaustive evaluation of the scientific literature on brain training games and programs. It was published Monday in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
Read the full article at National Public Radio (NPR).
How can employers best utilize older workers’ talents and take advantage of increasingly age-diverse workforces? Older workers are an abundant, valuable, and largely unrecognized resource. But negative stereotypes lead many employers to overlook this resource’s unique ability to increase productivity. As aging accelerates worldwide, it’s time to update our views about older workers.
Read the full article at MarketWatch.
The trend is the same, but it seems the numbers are getting worse. Seventy-one percent of Americans say they do not have enough retirement savings, according to a new national survey. Especially worrisome: More than half of those surveyed, 54 percent, believe they will never pay off their debt fully.
Read the full article at The Washington Post.
“The aging megatrend could generate massive opportunities. We are at the beginning of a longevity revolution. The aging megatrend — caused by increased life expectancies and plummeting birthrates — will disrupt traditional working norms, challenge virtually all businesses and transform society’s structure.
Conventional thinking holds that this upheaval will trigger an economic calamity. The worldforce will wither, savings will disappear and markets will collapse.
To the contrary, I believe aging could generate the most significant economic opportunity of our lifetimes.”
Read the full article by Andrew Sieg at Next Avenue.
“Technology holds great promise to prevent aging’s high-octane dramas if we’re willing to surrender some of our autonomy to it before we’re cognitively impaired. It’s now possible to monitor remotely and unobtrusively our driving and financial transactions, monitoring that could allow us to live with the confidence that problems will be detected and necessary interventions will be taken before a problem becomes a drama and that drama becomes a crisis.”
Read the full article at Forbes.
Are you a fidgeter?
From now on, you can ignore the frequent requests you undoubtedly receive to just sit still. A new study finds that fidgeting — the toe-tapping, foot-wagging and other body movements that annoy your co-workers — is in fact good for your health.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
Bringing older adults and children together can offer both groups big benefits, a new Stanford report concludes.
“There is growing reason to think that older people may be just the resource children need,” said Laura Carstensen, PhD, who led the report and is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Longevity.
Read the full article at Scope (Stanford School of Medicine blog).
Recent studies conducted by the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) show how employer-sponsored 401(k) plans and their advisers and administrators can use their resources to construct a menu of diversified retirement income options.One important conclusion from the SCL/SOA studies is that 401(k) plan sponsors have the potential to increase their participants’ retirement incomes by 5 percent to 20 percent by offering retirement income programs with institutional pricing instead of the standard retail pricing individuals might have to pay on their own.
Read the full article by Center on Longevity Research Scholar Steve Vernon at CBS MoneyWatch.
“Half of private America is working full time and have nothing, so when they hit 65 or 70, basically all they have is Social Security, which is on average a little over a grand a month,” said Joshua Gotbaum, a guest scholar in economic studies with the Brookings Institution. Yet, a state-by-state effort to turn around that dire scenario is afoot in what promises to be “the biggest expansion of retirement security since Social Security was created,” said Gotbaum.
Read the full article at CBS MoneyWatch.
Universities, colleges and community colleges have the opportunity to create programs for people in midlife who seek personal transformation, reinvention and redirection.
Read the full article at Next Avenue.