Productive Activity in Later Life

Abstract

The authors examined time spent on paid and unpaid work across the life course and historically to reflect on connections between activity patterns and macroeconomic events. The authors conducted quasi-cohort analysis on timeuse data over 30 years to examine trends in paid and unpaid work. Women aged 40 years and older spent more time on paid work and less time on unpaid work between 1971 and 1998. Men's paid work time decreased between 1971 and 1981 and between 1992 and 1998 but increased between 1981 and 1992, paralleling economic cycles. Paid work declined in later life, both in cross-sections and within birth cohorts, for men and women, and it declined more rapidly with each successive survey year. Unpaid work peaked around the usual retirement age for men and women in all birth cohorts. Retired seniors remained engaged in productive activities into later life, making a partial substitution of one form of productive engagement for another.

A Conceptual Model of Engagement Profiles Throughout the Decades of Older Adulthood

“…Participants consistently reported decreased participation in productive activities over the previous 5 years, as well as across the three decades of older adulthood, with the 65–74 year-old participants maintaining the highest level of participation. As supported by previous research, participants reported decreases in specific activities such as volunteer work, care for others, home repairs, and heavy housework (Johnson and Schaner, 2004; Fast et al, 2006; Krantz-Kent and Stewart, 2007). Previous literature suggests that domestic activities are maintained at a higher participation rate than other productive activities (Gauthier and Smeeding, 2003; Krantz-Kent, 2005), however, this was only true for light housework.…”

Pathways of participation in paid and unpaid work in mid to later life in the United Kingdom

“…First, previous studies have documented heterogeneous interrelationships between pairs of activities which appear to depend on the type and intensity of the involvement. Second, a large portion of previous evidence focused on only informal care and volunteering as unpaid forms of work, rarely considering other activities that have been shown to influence overall allocation of time, such as leisure activities and housework (Dosman et al , 2006; Fast et al , 2006; Dury et al , 2016). Third, the few studies that have examined latent patterns of paid and unpaid work are cross-sectional.…”

Activity Profiles among Older Adults: Latent Class Analysis Using the Korean Time Use Survey

“…Many studies tend to focus on a single or limited number of activity domains, such as physical activity [14,17], informal and formal social activity [18,19], solitary or sedentary behavior [19] and leisure activity [17,18,20]. Other researchers have focused directly on productive activity engagement in later life, such as paid work, caregiving and volunteering [21][22][23][24][25][26]. While these studies contribute to the literature on activity and well-being outcomes in later life, they often ignore the reality that most people engage in multiple activities simultaneously on a daily basis, and a series of activities can compete with and complement each other.…”