Understanding the nature of informal care received by older adults, particularly from adult children, is increasingly important. Existing research has largely overlooked the diversity of care and support received by older adults. To address this gap, we draw on data from Wave 7 (2015–2017) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study to identify patterns of parental care receipt from adult children. Latent class analysis identified three classes and stratifying these classes according to whether older adults reported care needs revealed five groups: (1) comprehensive receivers, who receive high levels of support from their adult children across all care and support tasks; (2) moderate receivers with care needs, who primarily receive support with domestic tasks and report limitations in daily functioning; (3) moderate receivers without care needs, who receive the same patterns of support but without reported functional limitations; (4) low receivers with care needs, who receive minimal support from their adult children across care tasks but report limitations in daily functioning; (5) low receivers without care needs, those who don’t report functional limitations and receive minimal support. Multinomial logistic regression showed that comprehensive receivers were more likely to be older and living alone, whereas low receivers without care needs were younger and more likely to live with a partner. These patterns help identify groups of older adults at varying levels of vulnerability in meeting their future care needs, providing evidence to support policy makers in planning and evaluating care provision for an ageing population.

Intergenerational support plays a vital role in maintaining cognitive health among older adults. However, whether two-way intergenerational support offers greater protection of cognitive function compared with one-way support – either provided or received – remains poorly understood. Data were obtained from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS, 2011–2018). An ordered probit (Oprobit) model was used to estimate the effect of intergenerational support on cognitive function. Robustness was assessed using the instrumental variables with conditional mixed process (IV-CMP) method, and heterogeneity was examined by stratifying the data by residence and gender. Two-way financial, care-giving and emotional support significantly reduced the risk of cognitive impairment in older adults, particularly in severe cases. Two-way financial support was more effective than either support provided or received alone in reducing the risk of cognitive impairment, whereas two-way care-giving was less effective than providing care-giving support alone. Among the three types of two-way intergenerational support, two-way care-giving demonstrated the strongest protective effect against cognitive impairment in older adults, whereas two-way financial support exhibited the weakest. Finally, notable rural–urban and gender disparities were observed to influence intergenerational support on the risk of cognitive impairment, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to address cognitive decline across diverse demographic groups.The study highlights the protective effects of two-way intergenerational support on cognitive function among older Chinese adults and reveals variations across support types and demographic groups. The findings offer invaluable insights for promoting cognitive health in older adults.

Maintaining optimal cognitive function is crucial for middle-aged and older adults. However, the lifecourse mechanisms linking parental religious affiliation to later-life cognition remain insufficiently understood. By integrating religious socialization theory and a lifecourse perspective, and using multiple waves of data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study employed structural equation modelling to investigate how personal religious affiliation, educational attainment, healthy lifestyles and social participation mediated the lifecourse pathways linking parental religious affiliation to later-life cognition. The results indicated that parental religious affiliation was overall negatively associated with later-life cognitive function. Parental religious affiliation was linked to later-life cognitive function through independent indirect pathways via educational attainment and healthy lifestyles, as well as through serial indirect pathways involving personal religious affiliation. This overall negative association was driven mainly by education-related pathways, while the positive pathways through personal religious affiliation and healthy lifestyles were substantially smaller in magnitude. The pathways involving social participation were not significant. The findings shed light on the lifecourse mechanisms through which family religious background was associated with later-life cognitive function and underscore the importance of education in understanding cognitive inequality in China’s relatively secular context.

Population ageing and international migration are reshaping care systems and heightening the need for linguistically responsive models of support. This qualitative systematic review synthesizes evidence on how community-dwelling older migrants experience language-related barriers when accessing and using health, aged and community care. Using JBI meta-aggregation and PRISMA 2020 reporting, we identified 51 peer-reviewed qualitative studies published between 2004 and 2023, predominantly from anglophone destinations with selected North- and West-European comparators.

Four interrelated themes emerged – system, provider, societal and cultural factors – showing that language operates as a systems-level determinant of access rather than an individual ‘deficit’. Barriers included inaccessible information, inadequate interpreter provision, digital exclusion and care models misaligned with cultural expectations. Enablers included peer-led supports, tailored communication, shared language with providers and opportunities for language learning. These dynamics shaped autonomy, trust and engagement, with emotional consequences when communication failed. The review also flags risks from stereotyping (e.g. ‘happy migrant’, ‘exaggerating migrant’) and the limits of checklist-style ‘cultural competence’, pointing instead to practice grounded in cultural safety and structural competence.

Findings have implications for co-designed, linguistically responsive models that integrate interpreter quality, plain-language communication, digital and health literacy supports and community infrastructure. A concise theoretical frame – migration-systems and ecological (lifecourse) – helps explain how system, provider, societal and cultural layers interact to shape communication and access. The findings predominantly reflect the contexts and literature included (English-language publications from the settings noted); future research should examine non-English scholarship and other migration systems to extend applicability.

The timing of labour market exit differs among socio-economic groups, but the differences by employment history type are not yet well understood. Taking a lifecourse perspective, this study examines to what extent employment patterns from early to mid career are associated with the timing of labour market exit in Belgium. It uses retrospective data from Wave 7 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and applies sequence analysis and cluster analysis to identify five employment history types among 2,417 Belgian respondents aged 50–70: three characterised by continuous full-time work and differing with regard to their timing of labour market entry; the fourth characterised by continuous part-time work; and the fifth, considered the most vulnerable, characterised by discontinuous work. The study applies discrete-time survival analysis to estimate to what extent the timing of labour market exit differs by employment history type. Compared to the Discontinuous career-cluster (reference group), individuals in the Late entry, full-time work-cluster had lower odds of exiting the labour market at any age between 50 and 70, while individuals who also worked full-time almost continuously but entered the labour market early or medium-late had higher odds of exiting the labour market. The difference with the Part-time work-cluster is not statistically significant. The findings show substantial diversity in employment histories among Belgian older individuals and that employment history matters for the timing of labour market exit. In the context of changing retirement policies, ignoring the diversity in employment trajectories risks reinforcing existing social inequalities.