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      International Journal of Cuban Studies is published by Pluto Journals, an Open Access publisher. This means that everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles from our international collection of social science journals. Furthermore Pluto Journals authors don’t pay article processing charges (APCs).

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      International Journal of Cuban Studies

      Volume 11, Issue 2
       
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      An Exploratory Study of How Older Cubans Cope with Difficult Living Conditions

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            Abstract

            Population aging is a concern to policy makers in Cuba where by 2025 there will be more pensioners than workers. We describe a unique, exploratory study of older Cubans 60+ years of age and how they cope with stress associated with economic vulnerability and adverse living conditions. Many older persons have incomes too low to provide a minimum standard of living. We address the following questions. (1) What chronic environmental stressors do older persons face? (2) What strategies do they employ to cope with these stressors? (3) What implications for policy follow from these questions? We discuss qualitative data from interviews with 50 older persons conducted in Havana in a mixed methods investigation. Most participants appraised difficult living conditions as hard to change, which explains a high prevalence of the use of avoidance coping strategies, including resignation. Policy makers need to understand how older persons cope with adversity to determine relevant service needs for this population.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            Journal ID (doi): 10.2307/j50005551
            Journal ID (jcode): intejcubastud
            Title: International Journal of Cuban Studies
            Publisher: Pluto Journals
            ISSN: 1756-3461
            ISSN: 1756-347X
            Publication date (Print): 1 December 2019
            Volume: 11
            Issue: 2 ( doiID: 10.13169/intejcubastud.11.issue-2 )
            Pages: 228-246
            Affiliations
            Yeshiva University, New York, USA
            Author notes
            [1]

            David L. Strug, Ph.D. is emeritus professor of social work at Yeshiva University in New York City. He has conducted research in Cuba on older persons, on the development of social work, on community health care, and on psychoanalysis. He co-edited Community Health Care in Cuba and Love, Loss, and Longing: The Impact of Travel Policy on Cuban-American Families. His email address is strug@ 123456yu.edu

            Article
            Publisher ID: intejcubastud.11.2.0228
            DOI: 10.13169/intejcubastud.11.2.0228
            SO-VID: c7896ebd-a335-4d17-8852-d678253182fd
            Copyright © © International Institute for the Study of Cuba
            License:

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Custom metadata
            lang eng

            ScienceOpen disciplines: Literary studies,Arts,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Cultural studies,Economics
            Keywords: older persons,Cuba,economic vulnerability,difficult living conditions,policy,coping

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