"Extending Life into Old Age: Health, Care, and Lifestyle Changes" by Madelin Gómez León

6th Research Forum session of the academic year 2025-2026 Thursday, April 16th, 2026 Speaker: Madelin Gómez León, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Chair: Aïda Solé-Auró, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Presentation - "Extending Life into Old Age: Health, Care, and Lifestyle Changes" Abstract Extending life into older ages has brought increasing attention to inequalities in health, care, and social participation. This seminar adopts a life-course perspective to examine how caregiving roles and digital engagement shape well-being in later life. I present findings from two recent studies. First, I analyze how different caregiving trajectories in mid-life are associated with health outcomes, focusing on depression and self-rated health among individuals with surviving parents or parents-in-law. Second, I explore changes in digital engagement among older adults, highlighting heterogeneity across age groups and selected countries, and their links to the multidimensional digital divide. Together, these studies show how care responsibilities and digital inclusion are key mechanisms through which health inequalities in older age are produced and reproduced. About the Speaker Madelin Gómez-León is a Lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Prior to joining UPF, she held several postdoctoral research positions at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and at the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) at UPF, as well as a research fellowship at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on population ageing, healthy life expectancy, retirement transitions, and digital engagement among older adults, using quantitative and comparative approaches. Her recent work examines health inequalities in later life, the digital divide among ageing populations, and social support and participation in later life.