On January 1, 1978, a new Long Term Care Program was introduced in British Columbia. Five levels of care are offered, any one of which may be provided at home or in a facility. This paper presents data from a longitudinal study of program clients (N = 3518) in two health districts, one urban, one semi-rural. The period of interest is the first twelve months after admission. Approximately one-quarter of these clients were discharged within one year of admission—one-half of them due to death. One-third of the deaths occurred in the first two months after admission and a further one-third in the following four months. Fewer than one-third of clients changed level or placement before death. Where transfers did occur they tended to be to higher levels of care and from home to an institution. The characteristics of clients who died are examined. These data may assist care providers to identify high risk clients. As well, they have implications for future resource allocation and planning.

Record running performances were compared between male and female athletes within an age range of 40–63 years and over events ranging in distance from 100 yards to the marathon. Curve fitting procedures indicated that age-performance relationships could be accurately expressed by use of an exponential model. Comparison of curve parameters revealed, a) that female performances declines more steeply with age than those of male athletes, b) decline with age was steeper for events beyond sprint distances than for sprint events for both sexes and, c) discrepancies between male and female performances did not relate significantly to event distance.

Female retirement has received very limited attention in the research literature. In this paper, the concept of career set is employed as the basis for a framework designed to analyse the impact of women's involvement in multiple careers on their adjustment to retirement. An extensive review of existing literature leads the author to conclude that the familial careers engaged in by married, working women have a mediative effect on their transition to retirement. In order to understand female retirement it is necessary to examine the interplay of multiple careers and their relative salience to women in the labour force.

This paper describes the design and utility of a ‘Crisis Assessment Technique’ for measuring the impact of selected life events as perceived by individuals who have actually experienced them. Using the transition to retirement as an example, the utility of such a measure for assessing the relative impact of given events, is demonstrated. Analysis of data on 300 recently retired men and women in south western Ontario suggests that retirement from one's work is not as critical a life event as previous measures suggest.

Dementia has long been known to shorten life in the elderly, although some studies have suggested a weakening of this relationship in recent decades. This Ontario study involves the comparison of residents with dementia versus a matched group without dementia who were living in long-term-care institutions at the start of the follow-up period.

The 2-year death rate in the 257 cases in the matched dementia group was 40.1%, significantly higher than the 30.7% rate in the matched controls. This excess was observed in all four types of institutions, and in seven of the eight sex-age groups. Individuals with dementia who were reported to cause disturbance by noisy behaviour had a significantly higher death rate than others.

Comparison of our findings with earlier work suggests that the trend of mortality in elderly institutional residents with dementia has continued downward.

Women who have returned to the labour force after the departure of their children from home or the death of their husband have a lower level of social relationships at the moment of their 'retirement. Thus, they tend to increase these relationships to a higher level than the remainder of the female population, including those who had worked outside the home all their lives. On the other hand, while sociocconomic status which is defined by the characteristics of the deceased husband is bound to favour traditional relationships (with kin and children), a status defined by the characteristics of the woman herself tends to favour relationships with friends and memberships in associations.

The declining rate of population growth and the consequent aging of the Canadian population is not a new phenomenon. However, current data and population projections suggest that the rate of aging will increase over the remainder of this century and beyond. From a macroeconomic viewpoint this implies a substantial decline in the growth of the labour force and, hence, the growth potential of the Canadian economy. However, this potential is also influenced by saving (and hence capital accumulation) and productivity performance. In these cases the impacts of population aging are relatively under-researched and reflect the resolution of conflicting forces. From a public policy viewpoint the pressures on government spending from demographic sources are at an historical minimum in the early 1980s, and hence this period offers a unique opportunity to develop the policies to effect the necessary transfer of public resources from programmes oriented towards the young to those oriented towards the senior members of Canadian society.

Three contrasting themes run through the literature on aging regarding the question of which years constitute the best period of a person's life. The themes are: 1) youth is best, 2) middle age is best, and 3) old age has its advantages. This study reports a 1979 representative and cross-sectional survey of 440 Edmontonians. Respondents were asked questions about the levels of satisfaction arising from various aspects of life as well as the amount of pressure experienced from these various life domains. The older years appear to be a period of relatively low pressure and relatively high satisfaction, although each age has advantages and disadvantages.