Productive Ageing in Europe: The importance of waged work, family work and volunteering

面对西方工业社会人口中老年人口比例的增加，“生产性老龄化”的概念，即老年人参与生产活动，在过去几年中变得越来越重要。这一方面涉及老年人更长时间地参与劳动力市场，另一方面也包括各种其他形式的参与，如志愿服务、照顾他们的同辈或孙子孙女以及其他非正式的生产性活动。通过生产性老龄化，我们了解到50岁至75岁的人参与有薪工作以及无偿活动，如家庭工作和志愿服务。在不同的欧洲国家，这种参与的制度环境是非常不同的：不同的国家不仅是法定退休年龄，而且还有慷慨的老年保障，以防止贫困，为老年人提供长期护理设施，以及为(孙辈)子女提供公共托儿服务。为了回答关于制度条件对特定形式的生产性老龄化的影响的研究问题，该项目采用了两个层次的分析：重点在于基于微观数据(健康调查，欧洲的老龄化和退休，分享)。除了这一中心项目目标外，还根据福利国家类型的理论模型产生宏观变量，这些模型被认为是制度环境对生命过程的影响的可操作性，并被作为解释变量引入微观模型。在两个分析层面上，四个综合观点是相关的：(A)生命过程的多维度，即分析不同形式的生产性老龄化之间的相互依存关系；(B)社会结构观点，分析来自不同社会背景的人参与不同形式的生产活动的情况，(C)说明男女参与情况差异的性别比较，以及(D)调查伴侣对老年人参与不同形式生产性老龄化的影响的夫妻视角。

In the face of an increasing percentage of elderly in the population of Western industrial societies the idea of 'productive ageing' in the sense of an involvement of the elderly in productive activities has gained importance in the last years. This involves on the one hand their longer participation in the labour market, on the other hand, it includes various other forms of participation, such as volunteering, caring for their peers or for their grandchildren and other informal productive activities.The aim of the project is to analyze which institutional circumstances enable the participation of the elderly in Europe in different forms of productive activities. By productive ageing we understand the participation of people aged between 50 and 75 to be in waged work as well as in unpaid activities, such as family work and volunteering. The institutional circumstances for this sort of participation are very different in various European countries: What differs in the countries is not only the legal retirement age but also the availability of a generous old age security, which prevents poverty, the availability of long-term care facilities for the elderly as well as the availability of public child care for (grand-)children.In order to answer the research question about the influence of institutional conditions on specific forms of productive ageing, the project takes two levels of analysis into consideration: The focus lies on the analysis of individual participation in the aforementioned forms of productive ageing in different European countries on the basis of microdata (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, SHARE). In addition to this central project goal, macro variables are generated on the basis of theoretical models of welfare state typologies, which are deemed to operationalize the influence of institutional circumstances on life courses and are introduced as explanatory variables into the micromodels.On both levels of analysis, four comprehensive perspectives are relevant: (a) the multi-dimensionality of life-courses, i.e. the analysis of the interdependency between different forms of productive ageing, (b) a social structural perspective which analyses the participation of people from different social backgrounds in different forms of productive activities, (c) a gender comparison which accounts for differences in the participation of men and women as well as (d) a couple perspective which investigates the influence of partners on the participation in different forms of productive ageing of the elderly.