Prevalence of activities in later life across European regions

Abstract

The active ageing policy supports several types of activities, including labour force participation, caregiving, social participation, and physical activity. The paper illustrates the prevalence of supported activities across individual characteristics and four supra-national European regions to assess how these activities are available for specific groups of older people. The analysis draws on wave 6 from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe held in 2015. A set of figures describes the availability of activities sorted by gender, age, health status, and the level of education in 17 European countries divided into four regions, and thus, presents the unavailable descriptive data important for researchers and policymakers. The results most of all show that the majority of the 50+ population engages in vigorous physical activity, whilst labour force participation and caregiving concern about one-third of it, and other activities much less. The findings show the inadequacy of the active ageing as a uniform context-insensitive EU policy and detect its potential for raising inequalities in later life, whilst the theoretical implications are discussed.

Social participation and life satisfaction among older adults: diversity of practices and social inequality in Switzerland

“…Further, we showed that the dominant discourses of active ageing, which so often focus on the productive definition of social participation, or generally the level of practices through the promotion of physical activity (Del Barrio et al , 2018), contribute particularly to an elitist vision of ageing that is observed essentially among a minority of the older adults: the most socio-economically favoured. In this sense, we agree with other authors describing active ageing as a product of – built by and for – the upper class (Lakomý, 2020). In addition, the focus on formal public participation tends to promote a more masculine model of ageing (Baeriswyl, 2018).…”

Prayer frequency and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among older adults in Europe

“…We grouped the 27 countries into four European regions, based on recent SHARE studies [29] , [30] and according to the European welfare regime typologies, which was first developed and classified by Esping-Andersen [31] and later redefined and extended to cover Southern Europe [32] and Central and Eastern Europe [33] , [34] , [35] , [36] . Thus, the countries are grouped into four regions: 1) The Western European region (Germany, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Austria) referring to the Western European or Bismarckian countries, 2) the Southern European region (Spain, Portugal, Malta, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus) referring to the Southern or Mediterranean countries, 3) the Central and Eastern European region (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria) referring to the Central and Eastern European or the post-communist countries, and 4) the Northern European region (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) referring to the Northern European or Scandinavian countries [32] , [34] , [36] .…”

Linking Myocardial Infarction and Frailty Status at Old Age in Europe: Moderation Effects of Country and Gender

“…The six European countries were selected based on geographical location, as well as a typology of European welfare regimes [ 40 , 41 ]: Sweden from Northern Europe; Czech Republic and Estonia from Eastern Europe/post-communist countries; Greece and Spain from Southern Europe, and France from Western Europe.…”