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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Productive engagement among older Americans
— prevalence, patterns, and implications for public policy | | Author(s) | James E Hinterlong |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging & Social Policy, vol 20, no 2, 2008 |
| Pages | pp 141-164 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Voluntary work [elderly] ; Employment of older people ; Informal care ; Citizenship ; Participation ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This study estimates the prevalence of productive engagement among adults aged 60+ residing in the United States over a nine-year period. Data was analysed from three waves of the Americans' Changing Lives Study (ACL), which allows the findings to describe the non-institutionalised older American population. The focus is on five activities of productive engagement: formal paid employment, irregular paid work, unpaid volunteerism, caregiving, and informal assistance to others. The authors identify changes in the engagement rates, and examine the extent to which engagement occurs through single or multiple concurrent activities. They document intra-individual patterns of engagement within and across forms of productive activity, including the continuity, initiation, and cessation of involvement. The findings reveal that late-life productive engagement is widespread, with the majority of older individuals involved in multiple forms of activity concurrently. Non-market-based activities such as caregiving, informal assistance, and volunteering are most prevalent. Initiation and cessation of activities are common and yield more complex patterns and lower rates of non-participation than are revealed in cross-sectional analyses. Time spent in productive engagement is highly variable and exhibits an overall decline across time. The authors conclude by highlighting policy strategies that increase the availability and quality of opportunities for productive engagement and promote planning for engagement in late life. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091203201 A |
| Classmark | GHH: GC: P6: IKC: TMB: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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