Public Policy Panel Interdisciplinary Symposium

Abstract Chair: Lori Simon-Rusinowitz;Panelists: Representatives of GSA Sections - Phillip Rozario (SRPP), Stephen Helfand (BS), Tamara Baker (BSS), Cynthia Brown (HS), Judith Howe (AGHE), Darina Petrovsky (ESPO); Discussant: Brian Lindberg. This interactive session is an interdisciplinary look at policy issues in aging with the speakers representing views from their sections. This session, organized by the GSA Public Policy Panel, will provide both GSA section leadership and attendees an opportunity to have an open dialogue on important public policy issues of significance in the field of aging. Presentations will likely address the COVID-19 pandemic, how GSA, each section and its members, and the federal government responded during the past year; how the policy work has been influenced by the increased acknowledgement of institutional and societal racism; and member experiences with the influx of additional economic relief, research funding, and funding for aging supports and services programs.


A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONSTRUCT OF RELIGIOSITY AMONG BABY BOOMERS AND TRAJECTORIES OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES
Joonsik Yoon, 1 Woosang Hwang, 2 Maria Brown, 2 and Merril Silverstein, 2 1. Syracuse University, Syracuse,New York,United States,2. Syracuse University,Syracuse,New York,New York,United States Although a number of studies have examined relationships between religiosity and social attitudes, less is known about how these relationships change over the life course using a multidimensional construct of religiosity among Baby Boomers. A multidimensional construct of religion allowed us to take a more person-centered approach to religiosity, whereby we examine the association between Baby Boomers with different types of religiosity and the trajectories of their political and gender role attitudes over a period of transition from early to later adulthood. We selected 798 young-adult Baby Boomers from the 1971 wave (mean age: 19 years) of the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LOSG) and tracked their political and gender role attitudes through until the 2016 wave (mean age: 64 years). Using latent class analysis, we identified four latent religious typologies: strongly religious, weakly religious, liberally religious, and privately religious. We found that Baby Boomers in the strongly religious class reported the most conservative political and gender role attitudes among the four classes over this period of transition. Baby Boomers in the privately religious class were conservative in their political and gender role attitudes than those in the weakly religious class. The liberally religious group generally reported the second most conservative political attitudes among the four identified groups, but reported the least conservative gender role attitudes of the four groups. Findings suggest that early religiosity may serve as a significant predictor affecting political and gender role attitudes throughout the adult life course. The lives of family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) may change dramatically with disease progression in their loved one. Many rely on spirituality as a resource for coping. There is evidence that persons experiencing transition/losses, as a consequence of disease/illness, can experience spiritual struggles or a crises in meaning. However, there is limited research related to spiritual struggles among family caregivers of persons with ADRD, particularly in the beginning stages of the disease process. In this study, three domains of spiritual struggle were identified after analyzing 27 caregiver interviews using the constant comparative method: 1) changes in relationship with their higher power (e.g., feelings of anger towards, feeling punished by, feeling disconnected from, and questioning); 2) changes in spiritual practices (e.g., decreased participation as a consequence of feeling unsupported, judged, or misunderstood by spiritual communities); and 3) dissonance between previously held core beliefs and current life circumstances (e.g., feelings of shame, doubt, and guilt as well as cessation of self-care activities due to the belief that they must sacrifice everything for their loved one). Notably, 74% experienced spiritual struggle in one domain; 33% in two domains, and 11% in three domains. The majority of participants had come to resolution of these spiritual struggles by the time they were interviewed. However, 40.7% were experiencing ongoing spiritual struggles, at the time of interview, suggesting the importance of identifying and addressing spiritual struggles in this population over time in order to enhance coping and adaptation.

HMONG OLDER ADULTS' END-OF-LIFE CARE PREFERENCES: PHYSICAL, PSYCHOSOCIAL, CULTURAL, RELIGIOUS, AND SPIRITUAL Youhung Her-Xiong, William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital, Altoona, Wisconsin, United States
As the Hmong community continues to grow and age in the United States (US), mainstream healthcare providers may encounter Hmong older adults who prefer their cultural endof-life (EOL) care. The challenge for these providers is to offer culturally sensitive EOL care to Hmong older adults within the realm of the Western healthcare system. One factor contributing to this challenge may be the lack of knowledge regarding Hmong older adults' EOL care preferences. Another is Hmong EOL care is interwoven with care from domains such as culture, religion, and spirituality. The purpose of this study is to garner an understanding of the care preferences of Hmong older adults during the dying process. A qualitative study using inductive content analysis was conducted. Thirty Hmong older adults who reside in Wisconsin participated in semi-structured interviews that were audio recorded and transcribed. Data was analyzed using inductive content analysis by Elo & Kyngäs (2008). The findings revealed that participants preferred care at EOL in the domains: physical, psychosocial, cultural, religious, and spiritual. Physical care included ADL's while psychosocial care related to communication and companionship. Cultural care included children as caregivers and decision-makers. Religious and spiritual care surrounded Animism and Christian beliefs such as soul calling and prayers. Findings also suggest Hmong older adults' care preferences as heterogenous and holistic. The findings have implications for the Hmong community and formal care services to collaborate on how culturally sensitive care can be provided to Hmong older adults at end of life.

RELIGIOSITY AMONG YOUNG-ADULT BABY BOOMERS: ASSOCIATIONS WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OVER 45 YEARS
Kent Jason Cheng, 1 Maria Brown, 2 Woosang Hwang, 2 and Merril Silverstein, 2 1. Syracuse University, Syracuse,New York,United States,2. Syracuse University,Syracuse,New York,New York,United States Past studies on the influence of religiosity on psychological well-being tended to be cross-sectional in nature and neglected generational differences. In this study, we assess how religiosity in early adulthood (mean age = 19) affects baby-boomers' psychological well-being over the life course. We used waves 1 to 9 or 45 years of survey data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG) (N=798), a sample of Southern Californians. First, we used latent class analyses on five domains to identify three typologies of baby boomers' religiosity in early adulthood. We call these typologies "strongly religious," "weakly religious," and "personally religious." Then, we used latent growth curve modelling to ascertain the influence of these religiosity typologies on psychological wellbeing from waves 1 to 9, controlling for timeinvariant (religious affiliation, age, sex, race, parental income) and varying (religious salience, education, marital status, and annual income) factors. We found that the strongly religious have a consistently upward psychological wellbeing trend throughout the study period whereas wellbeing started to decline for the weakly religious and personally religious at around wave 6, on when they were about mid-40s to almost 50. We provide evidence that religiosity in early adulthooda period in life characterized by the exploration of various options for the future brought about by greater personal freedom -positively influences baby boomer's psychological wellbeing over the life course.

STRUCTURE AND CHANGE: NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH ON CUMULATIVE DIS/ADVANTAGE Chair: William Dannefer Discussant: Carroll Estes
In a time of heightened social inequality and concern to reckon with its sources and consequences, the relevance of cumulative dis/advantage (CDA) to understanding patterns of aging has become even clearer, and CDA research has continued to expand in several fresh directions. Papers in this symposium will review the current state of knowledge regarding CDA and will present new analyses addressing key questions of its intersections with social change and its structural patterning. We will begin with a review of knowledge on comparative evidence regarding cumulative dis/ advantage and its cross-national patterning. With regard to change, will examine the compare the effect of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts through a comparative examination of trajectories of income inequality. We will also present evidence on the impact of gender, focusing on women's late-life health. Over the past several decades, evidence for cumulative dis/advantage as a regular feature of cohort aging has continued to cumulate, while new questions concerning the underlying dynamics continue to emerge. This paper reviews the accumulated knowledge base, and focused on three recently emerging lines of inquiry that hold great promise for expanding more fully our understanding of CDA processes: 1) the intersection of class stratification and race in the operation of CDA processes, 2) factors accounting for cross-national variations, and 3) the intersection of robust intracohort processed that generate cda with intercohort processes and the impact of historical and social change. These three new directions are briefly discussed.

IMPACT OF ECONOMIC SHOCKS ON CUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE PROCESSES: RECESSION, RECOVERY, AND TRAJECTORIES OF INEQUALITY
Stephen Crystal, Rutgers University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States This study compares the effect of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts by evaluating age-cohort trajectories of income inequality.