Productive Roles in an Older Society (1986) / Chapter Skim
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From page 1... ...
Unpaid productive activities are usually excluded from such analyses. As a consequence, and with an eye to the sets of issues outlined later in this chapter, the Committee on an Aging Society of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council convened a symposium on May 11-12, 1983, to explore what is known about unpaid productive roles and what 1
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From page 2... ...
Observers who are concerned about the burdens posed by an aging society often focus on the economic implications of the so-called ~epenctency ratio, which is conventionally expressed as the size of the retired population relative to the size of the working population. Projected increases in the dependency ratio, occurring as the proportion of older persons rises in the decades ahead, are figuring more and more in many discussions of public policy.
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From page 3... ...
When the full range of such dependents is expressed in the numerator of the dependency ratio, the economic implications of population aging appear in a different light. Recent studies have indicated that if birth rates remain low, a decline in "youth dependency" during the next decades may well moderate or even outweigh the economic significance of projected increases in "elderly dependency." Even when children are taken into account, the number and proportions of dependent nonworkers are frequently described by using age as the proxy for labor force status.
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From page 4... ...
Yet for the present those few social observers who are beginning to give attention to the significance of unpaid productive roles are focusing that attention upon older persons. Unpaid Productive Roles: Needs and Contributions of Older Persons Just as population aging is often perceived as posing macroeconomic burdens on society, larger numbers and larger proportions of older persons are frequently seen as generating an exponential increase in the need for health and social services.
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From page 5... ...
~day, in the contexts of rapid population aging and the continuing trend of retirement at earlier ages, renewed attention is being paid to the roles that older persons might undertake in formal and informal institutions and in patterns of social relations. Of particular interest to many observers is whether the vast reservoir of active, healthy, experienced, and educated retired persons present in an aging society can be more e~ectively tapped, on an unpaid basis, to meet projected increases in demands for social and health services.
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From page 6... ...
UNPAID PRODUCTIVE ROLES Voluntary assistance to others, whether through formal organizations or through informal arrangements, is an honored American tradition. Its forms are varied: volunteer work for churches, cooperatives, civic clubs, charities, immigrant societies, hospitals, schools, museums, Foster Grandparents, the Peace Corps.
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From page 7... ...
There is little understanding of the broad range of unpaid productive roles, whether performed by younger or older persons and whether inside or outside formal voluntary organizations. Neither is it clear if and how changes in the ways that unpaid productivity is valued will occur in an aging society.
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Another complicating factor is that in formal organizations volunteers have often been relegated to tasks comparable to low-paying jobs, a situation that is particularly common in organizations that rely heavily on women volunteers. As the labor market, the labor force, the volunteer market, and the volunteer force change, the rewards of voluntarism are increasingly hard to pinpoint.
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From page 9... ...
There is no taxonomy of productive roles, no systematic delineation of points to be considered if studies of these phenomena are to be related to other studies in response to the society's needs for information. Some of the elements of such a taxonomy are the diversity, extent, and contribution of unpaid productive activity; individual and group social and psychological dynamics and their effects; and how these changing factors relate to each other and to changing local and societal values, needs, and capacities.
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From page 10... ...
Moreover, specific needs are difficult to deduce from the aggregated data. Nevertheless, current studies suggest important points in considering the needs and productive roles of older men and women.
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From page 11... ...
. the idea that other unpaid activities can be an alternative condition for sizable numbers in the growing older population." These projections are based on current labor force participation rates applied to census projections, however, and they do not yield a sufficiently clear picture.
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. we should balance this against the likelihood of higher labor force participation rates, especially for better educated women, for cohorts up to the time they reach the older ages." Household and Family The projections of household and marital status of older Americans yield similarly mixed implications.
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The geographic mobility of Americans generally and new migrations of older Americans specifically raise questions not only about proximity of family members for care-giving but also about possible geographical mismatch of supply and demand for services for older people. If income, as Morgan suggests, is a highly important predictor of volunteer service, and if a substantial portion of financially able older Americans move to a few cities of the Sun Belt or segregate themselves in relatively wealthy communities, the poorer elderly, who may need more voluntary services, will be left in communities where there are fewer potential volunteers and fewer potential local donors of money and goods.
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From page 14... ...
say, how relationships of age, disease, disability, and mortality are changing is a question of critical importance in determining both the demand for various types of volunteer services among the elderly and the potential pool of elderly who are healthy and able to provide such services. Data from the National Health Interview Survey show that most Americans are relatively healthy into their mid-70s; but at the same time, rates of functional disability (some temporary, some long-term)
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From page 15... ...
. does not resolve all of the issues in assessing health, health service utilization, and the implications of health for the supply of and demand for volunteer services.
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As mentioned earlier, studies of this subject deal principally with volunteering in formal organizations. Symposium participants pointed to the substantial assistance provided by family members and the proliferation of selfhelp and support groups and other less formal forms of unpaid productive activity.
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From page 17... ...
cites a variety of impediments to organizational voluntarism on the part of older persons: bias against age, fear of displacement of paid workers, and competing opportunities for leisure time. The social and psychological dynamics are especially important.
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From page 18... ...
and Kieffer says many more might do so if ways were opened for their useful participation. Surveys in 1981 in the United States indicated that in the group aged 55 to 64, 6.7 million persons engaged in volunteer work and 3.9 million more were interested in volunteering; in the 65-and-older age group, 5.9 million were involved in volunteer activities and 2.55 million more were interested in doing so.
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From page 19... ...
He urges "field trials" in stimulating the formation of communities in which all the barriers to productive activity among the elderly are dealt with simultaneously, and in which older persons could develop their own physical, economic, and social arrangements, to encourage all kinds of productive activities and to allow maximum choice. This is an argument not for segregation of the aged but for development of settings in which those without the usual support networks might better control their own circumstances.
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From page 20... ...
One set of issues bears on the economic implications of the changing size of dependent subpopulations in relation to the per capita productivity of the working population. The other set of issues concerns the potential capacity of retired older persons to be productive in meeting social and health service needs in an aging society.
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From page 21... ...
In the absence of such information it is difficult to anticipate the extent, nature, and social effects of the unpaid productive roles that older persons might undertake in an aging society. In short, neither government agencies nor private organizations have adequate conceptualizations or adequate information on unpaid productive roles.
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From page 22... ...
Or to undertake, without payment, some of the jobs that people who need the money are now getting paid to do? A far better base of knowledge about unpaid productive roles is necessary if we are to anticipate the implications of such issues for an aging society.
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