Guest Editorial: The Study of Productive Aging

Abstract

Since the mid 1980s productive aging has taken on new urgency as the average life expectancy rises to age 76.6 years. It has engaged the interest and sparked controversy among gerontologists, some of whom have monetized the idea of productive aging, with its distasteful connotation of forced work. In fact, productive aging includes voluntary as well as paid contributions to society and, at its most basic, continuing self-care. Paid work itself is multifaceted and includes remunerative self-employment as well as work for others. For older employees, the central issue regarding participation in paid work is, of course, retirement. But here too, many factors influence an individual's decision to retire, including the quality of the work environment, the structure of social security and private pension plans, the availability of part-time work and/or flexibility of work hours, age discrimination, and health, to say nothing of individual socioeconomic characteristics such as income, wealth, education, marital status, spouse's labor force participation, race, and gender. The much-publicized MacArthur Study on Aging confirms earlier work showing that engagement in meaningful activities contributes to good health, satisfaction with life, and longevity, as well as providing a potentially effective means of reducing costs of physical and emotional illness in later life. Productive aging is a necessary object of study, and it incorporates a number of challenging questions: How to best use older persons? What are the constraints? How can work tasks and the workplace be altered to take into account physiological or pathological changes with aging? What are the bases of age discrimination and how can these be changed? In short, what can the tools of economics and other social sciences teach us about the positive effects of increased longevity on the creation of new markets and the stimulation of growth of the Gross Domestic Product, and about the significant obstacles and incentives to productive aging? Answers to these and other important questions depend on further studies. In 2020, 70 million baby boomers will constitute nearly 20% of the population. Given their talents, skill, and knowledge, it seems unlikely that they will—or indeed will be able to—sit idly by collecting Social Security and using Medicare without continuing to contribute to society. (However, it must also be acknowledged that there will always be those who are unable to remain productive for the entire life course. Their needs must be respected, and they must be protected by Social Security and Medicare.) Continued research on the variety of issues relating to productive aging, and reports about the results of these studies are in the best interests of both society and the individual. Dr. Butler is the founding director of the National Institute on Aging.

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