BARBARAH. VINICK
RETIREMENT: DESCRIPTION AND PRESCRIPTION
Karen Altergott, ed. 1988 Daily Life in Later Life: Comparative Perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 252pp. $35.00hb, $16.95pb. Robert Morris and Scott A. Bass, eds. 1988 Retirement Reconsidered: Economic and Social Roles for Older People. New York: Springer Publishing Co. 258pp. $33.95. In the introductory paper in Daily Life in Later Life, Altergott summarizes the modernization model to describe the status of older people in industrial societies: "Improved health and increased longevity, new technologies in the labor force, elaborated educational systems, and urbanization leave older people alive, underemployed, untrained in the latest technologies, and separated from family/community webs of relationships (p. 13)." Morris and Bass, in the introduction to Retirement Reconsidered, invoke an almost identical set of characteristics in regard to the contemporary situation in the United States: "Employment patterns, changing income patterns over the life cycle, the uses of leisure consumption versus goods production, the function of the educational system, and patterns of family relationship are all being shaken up by the maturing of society both demographically and economically (p. 10)." Given these conditions of modem society, these two volumes explore different, though complementary, perspectives on their consequences. The former looks "downward" to their impact on the daily lives of individuals; the latter looks "upward" to issues of social policy. Altergott and associates report on the routine day-to-day activities of large representative samples in seven national regions - Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, the United States, Scandinavia, Canada, and Japan. The result of an initial roundtable discussion at the 1981 Intemational Congress of Gerontology in Hamburg, the book focuses on time budget analysis, a descriptive method of "indirect observation" based on self-reports of activities (via diaries or verbal accounts), usually of a twenty-four hour period. Although the method has many advantages as characterized by Altergott, including flexibility in data analysis, potential richness of data, and comparability in cross-national contexts, researchers have tended to link their work only to other time-use research, and there has been a lack of integration with other bodies of knowledge. For many readers, then, this book may represent the first exposure to time-budget data. Morris and Bass in Retirement Reconsidered address social and economic policy issues in the United States, which they see as demanding utmost attention as "the scale of change that the new demography and the new economy combine to force is so urgent... (p. 11)." The book resulted from a series of symposia organized by the faculty of the Gerontology Institute of the University of Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 5: 85-91, 1990. © 1990KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printedin the Netherlands.
86
BARBARAH. VINICK
Massachusetts at Boston, which itself represents a successful pioneering effort to effect new roles for elders in the face of those societal changes. The chapters, many of which were contributed by economic analysts and planners, describe the present situation vis-a-vis the status of the older population, predict future trends, and offer some examples of modest steps that have been taken in response, including the Gerontology Institute program. The well-considered chapter by Moody at the beginning of the volume sets the stage for those that follow by highlighting a central contradiction regarding the social situation of older citizens of the United States (and, as Daily Life demonstrates, other industrial nations as well): Although elders are today more vigorous and "able" than ever before and are living longer (the demographics are documented in the following chapter by Rappaport and Plumley), they have been leaving the labor force earlier than ever. This has resulted in debates concerning generational equity and the capacity of the Social Security system to meet the needs of future generations of retirees, as a growing proportion of the lifespan is spent in retirement. A crisis of legitimation has developed: "How to preserve support for the legitimacy of public spending on the elderly when past gains have already had an overwhelming positive impact on their welfare (p. 27)." Hudson's cogent chapter on "Politics and the New Old" elaborates the theme of contradictions that have been engendered by the success of post-World War II liberal policies. He points out that the emphasis on the large proportion of "able" elderly, a tactic which organizations of elders and their advocates have espoused as a counter to the outdated image of elders as vulnerable and weak, has its dangers. While the emergence of a politically self-conscious interest group could result in increased productive contributions by able elders (with attendant benefits to themselves and to society), such segmentation could also result in relegation of the remainder of the older population to a totally dependent status as "social oufliers." Old-age benefits, which now are bestowed mainly on the basis of citizenship, would increasingly be based on class, as targeting and means-testing would be necessary to differentiate the frail and needy from the able. Hudson's excellent presentation is even-handed, and he urges realistic and clear-sighted attention to consequences, both intended and latent. Chapters by economists Chen and Crown address issues of generational equity and the vitality of the Social Security system, as broached in Moody's preceding essay. The results of their analyses are optimistic (although somewhat difficult for the non-economist to follow). Both assert that the aged of the future will not represent an overwhelming burden on the working population. For example, in regard to the "dependency ratio" debate, Crown asserts that "the real cost of supporting each dependent (both children and the elderly) in 2050 (when the elderly will constitute the highest percentage of the population) could be almost 13 times the corresponding cost in 1960 (the year of the highest dependency ratio in recent decades) before the real support burden would be as great as it was in 1960) (p. 96)." Crown's scenario assumes a modest level of economic growth, as does that of Chen. In addition, the validity of Chen's
REVIEW ARTICLE
87
predictive model also depends on increased labor force participation of older people, a development he sees likely as the pool of workers in the younger age groups decreases and the health of elders continues to improve. The stated or underlying thesis of the majority of the remaining chapters is that increased workforce participation by the elderly is desirable - both for the elderly themselves and for society - and should be encouraged by policies in the public and private sectors. Peterson and Coberly present evidence that older people are physically and intellectually capable of productive work, and even retraining, facts that should come as no surprise to gerontologists, although not generally recognized by employers. They are echoed by Rothstein in an advocacy chapter on older worker employment opportunities in the private sector. Sheppard marshals research findings to show that older workers are better off financially, are happier than retirees, and have been successful at a variety of jobs, even in their eighties. Similarly, in the most unabashedly partisan of the chapters, Rorlich calls for a more humanitarian agenda in economic policy in order to encourage productive roles for older people. Finally, Bass describes the need for new and more flexible jobs, appropriate to the needs of elders, which educational institutions, such as his own, have been and can be instrumental in developing. And Cahn details an innovative nonmarket exchange system of "service credits," which he advocates as a means of answering society's unrnet needs for services and at the same time providing productive roles for the aged who need them. Although few of the authors imply easy or quick solutions for what are seen as important challenges in the next decades, they exhibit an essential optimism that the system can be altered to meet the needs that have been demonstrated. It is to the editors' credit that they have included a chapter by Kuhns, an economist with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which tempers the positive outlook of other analysts. In an "economy approaching crisis," upon which he expands, there is little room in the workforce for those over 65. As the number of positions in heavy industry and manufacturing have declined, unions have had to focus on negotiating earlier retirement ages, not later ones. And even in the service trades, there has been practically no development of employment opportunities for older age groups. Change can come about only after massive economic and governmental reforms. The knowledge and thought that the authors have brought to bear on the issues are impressive. The chapters in Part I, The Dynamics of Change, are especially rewarding in laying the groundwork for the responses that follow. However, one complaint is that the emphasis on the necessity of meaningful work roles for the elderly denigrates retirement, which is seen as a waste of human resources, and, especially as perceived in the chapter by Sheppard, frustrates personal happiness in old age. The book ignores the body of research that finds positive personal aspects of retirement - for example, that the majority of retirees welcome retirement as a well-earned reward, a kind of "veteranship"; that life satisfaction is as high among retirees as workers; that retirees claim that health improves after retirement; that retirement brings married couples closer.
88
BARBARA H. VINICK
Only Hagestad, in her chapter on the able elderly in the family context, notes a benefit of retirement in generating increased opportunity to strengthen family relationships. Ignoring the personal benefits of retirement (admittedly, not a focus of the book) avoids issues on the interface between policy and the individual. Will relatively affluent elders be willing to work, even if work options are available? Certainly, they would if the age of eligibility for retirement benefits were raised, a policy supported by several of the authors. Otherwise, it may take generations for the typical older person to accept and internalize a new view of old age that includes work as a normative aspect. Our ongoing research has not indicated much frustrated desire among non-working retirees to resume the work role, no matter how flexible and what options are available. At most, among a minority, there is a kind of passivity about parttime work ("...if something comes along") which might be channeled into action under the right conditions. Better educated elders may be more responsive in the future, but it may take considerable societal effort to entice them away from the satisfactions of tending their own gardens. Although one of the stated purposes of Daily Life in Later Life is "...to begin to draw links between policy and individual ways of living (p. 12)", that volume, too, falls short in delineating that important intersection. Little information is given by authors concerning national policy beyond broad generalizations, and attempts to relate daily activities to wider social and cultural factors are rudimentary, usually presented as conjectural asides. The final chapter by Altergott and Duncan includes more information on policies that concern elders in the nations studied (such as availability of home care and age eligibility for retirement benefits) and draws some conclusions about their effects on certain aspects of daily life. A competent effort in itself, this final summation relies heavily on references to the work of outside theorists and researchers, rather than on data presented in the individual chapters. Because they often do not flow from the material, the conclusions have a kind of "tacked on" quality. The book can be seen as an ambitious project (although more modest than the goals initially advanced) to consolidate descriptive data from a variety of industrialized countries. As such, it is "only the beginning of the task of discovery", as the last paragraph of the book asserts. The reader is presented with a set of independent reports of daily activities, based on national surveys that were deemed appropriate and were available, sometimes undertaken by the authors themselves, but usually not. Altergott summarizes an international standard used in the categorization of time-budget data, including types of social activities, companions, and locations, that authors were to use as guidelines. However, chapter writers were apparently considerably constrained by the data available to them. There are some commonalities, such as an emphasis on gender differences and, in several chapters, comparisons between working and non-working populations, and young-old versus old-old. However, categorization and emphasis differ markedly from chapter to chapter, making crossnational comparisons in anything but the most general sense quite difficult.
REVIEWARTICLE
89
It is possible to tease out information relating to retirement, although most of the chapters have a general focus on "old age" rather than retirement, per se. The chapter by Abrams on elders in Great Britain was based on a study that compared a sample aged 65 and over with one aged 45 to 64. Analysis of activities on weekends and weekdays, summer and winter (the reader is hardpressed to follow), leads him to conclude that patterns of activities are quite similar among the two age groups (one in which most men are presumably working and the other not) and that both groups are generally passive and homebound. The chapter on the Netherlands by Knipscheer and associates similarly compares age groups, but in this case there are three - ages 55-64, 65-74, and 75 and older. The reader is led down a difficult path to the conclusions that time use and activities do not change dramatically until the mid-seventies when there is an apparent decline. Widowhood and physical impairment have major effects on time use, but not retirement or launching the last child. Andorka's contribution on daily life in Hungary has a more overt emphasis on retirement. He reports on a sample of young-old from 55 to 70. In the face of widespread inadequacy of retirement income, as retirement benefits have not kept pace with inflation, work is commonplace after retirement, especially among those in rural areas who have small agricultural plots. People who live in cities are disadvantaged in not having access to this form of supplemental income, and their economic situation usually deteriorates even faster. Andorka characterizes life among older Hungarians as "stressed (and) overburdened by working activities (p. 95)," a conclusion with which the editors of Retirement Reconsidered might take issue. Among the data in Andersson's busy chapter on Scandinavia is a report of a study he conducted in Sweden comparing a group of men in their third year of retirement with a group who were about to retire. Differences in activities were minor, he reports, although retirees spent 5 hours more on mass media, and more time on "indoor activities" and domestic work. In the United States, Altergott likewise downplays changes in activities when analyzing data obtained from a sample aged 55 to 88. She notes a decline in work and child care and, in the oldest age group, in involvement in voluntary organizations and helping other adults. Sleep increases, as does participation in "passive leisure" (most likely, television watching). In the most thoughtful of the chapters, Zuzanek and Box report findings of surveys that compared time use and leisure participation (an additional perspective to the strict time-budget format, which includes an attitudinal component) among an employed sample ages 45 to 60 and a sample of retirees 65 and over. They conclude that, contrary to common belief, the time retirees formerly spent working is not all converted to "free time". Rather, the extra hours are spread across all major groups of activities. Retirees spend more time sleeping, eating, caring for themselves and others, doing housework, shopping, and errands. Among free time activities, mass media consumption increases as retirees age, while social activities, hobbies, outings, and physically active activities decrease gradually. They favor a view of age- and retirement-related activity change as
90
BARBARAH. VINICK
substitution and re-structuring rather than withdrawal or continuity. In writing of Japan, Wada addresses issues concerning retirement policies, although he does not connect them directly to findings about daily life. Japan has an exceptionally high rate of employment after retirement. For example, among the population who receive the highest pension benefits, 45% of men ages 65 to 69 are employed. He shows data which suggest that work is desired as a means of social involvement rather than economic improvement. But the traditional system of seniority, early retirement, and re-employment is breaking down as the older population increases, and it may be more difficult for elders of the future to find jobs. Elders will have to find new ways to spend leisure time beyond watching television. Wada's plea for development of leisure roles in retirement in place of or in addition to mass media consumption is echoed throughout the volume. In every country studied, with the exception of Hungary, older people spend more time watching television than any other kind of leisure activity. (Some of the analysts note that television predominates in the lives of younger people, too, but increases in the older age groups.) Such findings support the viewpoints expressed in the Morris and Bass volume concerning the desirability of more productive roles in retirement. As Altergott and Duncan note in their summary, "The vision of happy and helpful older people finding new and expanded paths to a high quality of life in later life is not reflected in the national reports provided here, and cannot be considered the modal experience in later life, though most people are indeed competent. There was little evidence of new activities and opportunities for personal development in later life in the societies considered (p. 243-244)." Will societies and individuals be up to the respective challenges of providing and accepting new roles in old age? Each book provides fodder for thought on such matters, and each is ground-breaking in its own way. Neither can be accused of rehashing the same tired material. Retirement Reconsidered is a brave book, offering predictions and recommendations as well as insightful analyses of the current scene. A drawback is that it tends to be somewhat polemical in its approach. Retirement is seen, for the most part, as a condition to be overcome. Individual attitudes and motives, and personal characteristics including health status are barely considered. But that is hardly surprising in a volume concerning high-level social and economic policy, and, in large measure, the book delivers what it promises. The same cannot be said for Daily Life in Later Life, which seems to promise considerably more than it delivers. Time-budget analysis, as pure description, tends to produce flat "facts," often less than meaningful. When unadorned by supplementary data (for instance, satisfaction with activities), the reader cannot easily see the forest for the trees. The best chapters brought in information from studies with another perspective. Altergott recognizes the desirability of expansion of studies to include subjective aspects of behavior, stating that the "direction of linking choice, preference, and, perhaps in the future, capacity and perceived opportunity to the analysis of behavior is necessary (p. 142)."
REVIEWARTICLE
91
Other drawbacks, as noted previously, have to do with the need for greater comparability of data from one country to another (a notoriously difficult problem, not without precedent in cross-national research) and analysts' difficulty in pointing out explicit links between daily activities and national policy, somewhat ameliorated by a fine concluding chapter that attempts further definition of such linkages. In conclusion, the book is valuable as a resource for information that cannot easily be obtained elsewhere. It should be praised as an ambitious effort in a methodological tradition that has yet to mature. Hopefully, its publication will result in mutually beneficial cross-pollination with other currents of research on old age.
VA Normative Aging Study and Boston university School of Public Health
RETIREMENT: DESCRIPTION AND PRESCRIPTION
Karen Altergott, ed. 1988 Daily Life in Later Life: Comparative Perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 252pp. $35.00hb, $16.95pb. Robert Morris and Scott A. Bass, eds. 1988 Retirement Reconsidered: Economic and Social Roles for Older People. New York: Springer Publishing Co. 258pp. $33.95. In the introductory paper in Daily Life in Later Life, Altergott summarizes the modernization model to describe the status of older people in industrial societies: "Improved health and increased longevity, new technologies in the labor force, elaborated educational systems, and urbanization leave older people alive, underemployed, untrained in the latest technologies, and separated from family/community webs of relationships (p. 13)." Morris and Bass, in the introduction to Retirement Reconsidered, invoke an almost identical set of characteristics in regard to the contemporary situation in the United States: "Employment patterns, changing income patterns over the life cycle, the uses of leisure consumption versus goods production, the function of the educational system, and patterns of family relationship are all being shaken up by the maturing of society both demographically and economically (p. 10)." Given these conditions of modem society, these two volumes explore different, though complementary, perspectives on their consequences. The former looks "downward" to their impact on the daily lives of individuals; the latter looks "upward" to issues of social policy. Altergott and associates report on the routine day-to-day activities of large representative samples in seven national regions - Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, the United States, Scandinavia, Canada, and Japan. The result of an initial roundtable discussion at the 1981 Intemational Congress of Gerontology in Hamburg, the book focuses on time budget analysis, a descriptive method of "indirect observation" based on self-reports of activities (via diaries or verbal accounts), usually of a twenty-four hour period. Although the method has many advantages as characterized by Altergott, including flexibility in data analysis, potential richness of data, and comparability in cross-national contexts, researchers have tended to link their work only to other time-use research, and there has been a lack of integration with other bodies of knowledge. For many readers, then, this book may represent the first exposure to time-budget data. Morris and Bass in Retirement Reconsidered address social and economic policy issues in the United States, which they see as demanding utmost attention as "the scale of change that the new demography and the new economy combine to force is so urgent... (p. 11)." The book resulted from a series of symposia organized by the faculty of the Gerontology Institute of the University of Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 5: 85-91, 1990. © 1990KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printedin the Netherlands.
86
BARBARAH. VINICK
Massachusetts at Boston, which itself represents a successful pioneering effort to effect new roles for elders in the face of those societal changes. The chapters, many of which were contributed by economic analysts and planners, describe the present situation vis-a-vis the status of the older population, predict future trends, and offer some examples of modest steps that have been taken in response, including the Gerontology Institute program. The well-considered chapter by Moody at the beginning of the volume sets the stage for those that follow by highlighting a central contradiction regarding the social situation of older citizens of the United States (and, as Daily Life demonstrates, other industrial nations as well): Although elders are today more vigorous and "able" than ever before and are living longer (the demographics are documented in the following chapter by Rappaport and Plumley), they have been leaving the labor force earlier than ever. This has resulted in debates concerning generational equity and the capacity of the Social Security system to meet the needs of future generations of retirees, as a growing proportion of the lifespan is spent in retirement. A crisis of legitimation has developed: "How to preserve support for the legitimacy of public spending on the elderly when past gains have already had an overwhelming positive impact on their welfare (p. 27)." Hudson's cogent chapter on "Politics and the New Old" elaborates the theme of contradictions that have been engendered by the success of post-World War II liberal policies. He points out that the emphasis on the large proportion of "able" elderly, a tactic which organizations of elders and their advocates have espoused as a counter to the outdated image of elders as vulnerable and weak, has its dangers. While the emergence of a politically self-conscious interest group could result in increased productive contributions by able elders (with attendant benefits to themselves and to society), such segmentation could also result in relegation of the remainder of the older population to a totally dependent status as "social oufliers." Old-age benefits, which now are bestowed mainly on the basis of citizenship, would increasingly be based on class, as targeting and means-testing would be necessary to differentiate the frail and needy from the able. Hudson's excellent presentation is even-handed, and he urges realistic and clear-sighted attention to consequences, both intended and latent. Chapters by economists Chen and Crown address issues of generational equity and the vitality of the Social Security system, as broached in Moody's preceding essay. The results of their analyses are optimistic (although somewhat difficult for the non-economist to follow). Both assert that the aged of the future will not represent an overwhelming burden on the working population. For example, in regard to the "dependency ratio" debate, Crown asserts that "the real cost of supporting each dependent (both children and the elderly) in 2050 (when the elderly will constitute the highest percentage of the population) could be almost 13 times the corresponding cost in 1960 (the year of the highest dependency ratio in recent decades) before the real support burden would be as great as it was in 1960) (p. 96)." Crown's scenario assumes a modest level of economic growth, as does that of Chen. In addition, the validity of Chen's
REVIEW ARTICLE
87
predictive model also depends on increased labor force participation of older people, a development he sees likely as the pool of workers in the younger age groups decreases and the health of elders continues to improve. The stated or underlying thesis of the majority of the remaining chapters is that increased workforce participation by the elderly is desirable - both for the elderly themselves and for society - and should be encouraged by policies in the public and private sectors. Peterson and Coberly present evidence that older people are physically and intellectually capable of productive work, and even retraining, facts that should come as no surprise to gerontologists, although not generally recognized by employers. They are echoed by Rothstein in an advocacy chapter on older worker employment opportunities in the private sector. Sheppard marshals research findings to show that older workers are better off financially, are happier than retirees, and have been successful at a variety of jobs, even in their eighties. Similarly, in the most unabashedly partisan of the chapters, Rorlich calls for a more humanitarian agenda in economic policy in order to encourage productive roles for older people. Finally, Bass describes the need for new and more flexible jobs, appropriate to the needs of elders, which educational institutions, such as his own, have been and can be instrumental in developing. And Cahn details an innovative nonmarket exchange system of "service credits," which he advocates as a means of answering society's unrnet needs for services and at the same time providing productive roles for the aged who need them. Although few of the authors imply easy or quick solutions for what are seen as important challenges in the next decades, they exhibit an essential optimism that the system can be altered to meet the needs that have been demonstrated. It is to the editors' credit that they have included a chapter by Kuhns, an economist with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which tempers the positive outlook of other analysts. In an "economy approaching crisis," upon which he expands, there is little room in the workforce for those over 65. As the number of positions in heavy industry and manufacturing have declined, unions have had to focus on negotiating earlier retirement ages, not later ones. And even in the service trades, there has been practically no development of employment opportunities for older age groups. Change can come about only after massive economic and governmental reforms. The knowledge and thought that the authors have brought to bear on the issues are impressive. The chapters in Part I, The Dynamics of Change, are especially rewarding in laying the groundwork for the responses that follow. However, one complaint is that the emphasis on the necessity of meaningful work roles for the elderly denigrates retirement, which is seen as a waste of human resources, and, especially as perceived in the chapter by Sheppard, frustrates personal happiness in old age. The book ignores the body of research that finds positive personal aspects of retirement - for example, that the majority of retirees welcome retirement as a well-earned reward, a kind of "veteranship"; that life satisfaction is as high among retirees as workers; that retirees claim that health improves after retirement; that retirement brings married couples closer.
88
BARBARA H. VINICK
Only Hagestad, in her chapter on the able elderly in the family context, notes a benefit of retirement in generating increased opportunity to strengthen family relationships. Ignoring the personal benefits of retirement (admittedly, not a focus of the book) avoids issues on the interface between policy and the individual. Will relatively affluent elders be willing to work, even if work options are available? Certainly, they would if the age of eligibility for retirement benefits were raised, a policy supported by several of the authors. Otherwise, it may take generations for the typical older person to accept and internalize a new view of old age that includes work as a normative aspect. Our ongoing research has not indicated much frustrated desire among non-working retirees to resume the work role, no matter how flexible and what options are available. At most, among a minority, there is a kind of passivity about parttime work ("...if something comes along") which might be channeled into action under the right conditions. Better educated elders may be more responsive in the future, but it may take considerable societal effort to entice them away from the satisfactions of tending their own gardens. Although one of the stated purposes of Daily Life in Later Life is "...to begin to draw links between policy and individual ways of living (p. 12)", that volume, too, falls short in delineating that important intersection. Little information is given by authors concerning national policy beyond broad generalizations, and attempts to relate daily activities to wider social and cultural factors are rudimentary, usually presented as conjectural asides. The final chapter by Altergott and Duncan includes more information on policies that concern elders in the nations studied (such as availability of home care and age eligibility for retirement benefits) and draws some conclusions about their effects on certain aspects of daily life. A competent effort in itself, this final summation relies heavily on references to the work of outside theorists and researchers, rather than on data presented in the individual chapters. Because they often do not flow from the material, the conclusions have a kind of "tacked on" quality. The book can be seen as an ambitious project (although more modest than the goals initially advanced) to consolidate descriptive data from a variety of industrialized countries. As such, it is "only the beginning of the task of discovery", as the last paragraph of the book asserts. The reader is presented with a set of independent reports of daily activities, based on national surveys that were deemed appropriate and were available, sometimes undertaken by the authors themselves, but usually not. Altergott summarizes an international standard used in the categorization of time-budget data, including types of social activities, companions, and locations, that authors were to use as guidelines. However, chapter writers were apparently considerably constrained by the data available to them. There are some commonalities, such as an emphasis on gender differences and, in several chapters, comparisons between working and non-working populations, and young-old versus old-old. However, categorization and emphasis differ markedly from chapter to chapter, making crossnational comparisons in anything but the most general sense quite difficult.
REVIEWARTICLE
89
It is possible to tease out information relating to retirement, although most of the chapters have a general focus on "old age" rather than retirement, per se. The chapter by Abrams on elders in Great Britain was based on a study that compared a sample aged 65 and over with one aged 45 to 64. Analysis of activities on weekends and weekdays, summer and winter (the reader is hardpressed to follow), leads him to conclude that patterns of activities are quite similar among the two age groups (one in which most men are presumably working and the other not) and that both groups are generally passive and homebound. The chapter on the Netherlands by Knipscheer and associates similarly compares age groups, but in this case there are three - ages 55-64, 65-74, and 75 and older. The reader is led down a difficult path to the conclusions that time use and activities do not change dramatically until the mid-seventies when there is an apparent decline. Widowhood and physical impairment have major effects on time use, but not retirement or launching the last child. Andorka's contribution on daily life in Hungary has a more overt emphasis on retirement. He reports on a sample of young-old from 55 to 70. In the face of widespread inadequacy of retirement income, as retirement benefits have not kept pace with inflation, work is commonplace after retirement, especially among those in rural areas who have small agricultural plots. People who live in cities are disadvantaged in not having access to this form of supplemental income, and their economic situation usually deteriorates even faster. Andorka characterizes life among older Hungarians as "stressed (and) overburdened by working activities (p. 95)," a conclusion with which the editors of Retirement Reconsidered might take issue. Among the data in Andersson's busy chapter on Scandinavia is a report of a study he conducted in Sweden comparing a group of men in their third year of retirement with a group who were about to retire. Differences in activities were minor, he reports, although retirees spent 5 hours more on mass media, and more time on "indoor activities" and domestic work. In the United States, Altergott likewise downplays changes in activities when analyzing data obtained from a sample aged 55 to 88. She notes a decline in work and child care and, in the oldest age group, in involvement in voluntary organizations and helping other adults. Sleep increases, as does participation in "passive leisure" (most likely, television watching). In the most thoughtful of the chapters, Zuzanek and Box report findings of surveys that compared time use and leisure participation (an additional perspective to the strict time-budget format, which includes an attitudinal component) among an employed sample ages 45 to 60 and a sample of retirees 65 and over. They conclude that, contrary to common belief, the time retirees formerly spent working is not all converted to "free time". Rather, the extra hours are spread across all major groups of activities. Retirees spend more time sleeping, eating, caring for themselves and others, doing housework, shopping, and errands. Among free time activities, mass media consumption increases as retirees age, while social activities, hobbies, outings, and physically active activities decrease gradually. They favor a view of age- and retirement-related activity change as
90
BARBARAH. VINICK
substitution and re-structuring rather than withdrawal or continuity. In writing of Japan, Wada addresses issues concerning retirement policies, although he does not connect them directly to findings about daily life. Japan has an exceptionally high rate of employment after retirement. For example, among the population who receive the highest pension benefits, 45% of men ages 65 to 69 are employed. He shows data which suggest that work is desired as a means of social involvement rather than economic improvement. But the traditional system of seniority, early retirement, and re-employment is breaking down as the older population increases, and it may be more difficult for elders of the future to find jobs. Elders will have to find new ways to spend leisure time beyond watching television. Wada's plea for development of leisure roles in retirement in place of or in addition to mass media consumption is echoed throughout the volume. In every country studied, with the exception of Hungary, older people spend more time watching television than any other kind of leisure activity. (Some of the analysts note that television predominates in the lives of younger people, too, but increases in the older age groups.) Such findings support the viewpoints expressed in the Morris and Bass volume concerning the desirability of more productive roles in retirement. As Altergott and Duncan note in their summary, "The vision of happy and helpful older people finding new and expanded paths to a high quality of life in later life is not reflected in the national reports provided here, and cannot be considered the modal experience in later life, though most people are indeed competent. There was little evidence of new activities and opportunities for personal development in later life in the societies considered (p. 243-244)." Will societies and individuals be up to the respective challenges of providing and accepting new roles in old age? Each book provides fodder for thought on such matters, and each is ground-breaking in its own way. Neither can be accused of rehashing the same tired material. Retirement Reconsidered is a brave book, offering predictions and recommendations as well as insightful analyses of the current scene. A drawback is that it tends to be somewhat polemical in its approach. Retirement is seen, for the most part, as a condition to be overcome. Individual attitudes and motives, and personal characteristics including health status are barely considered. But that is hardly surprising in a volume concerning high-level social and economic policy, and, in large measure, the book delivers what it promises. The same cannot be said for Daily Life in Later Life, which seems to promise considerably more than it delivers. Time-budget analysis, as pure description, tends to produce flat "facts," often less than meaningful. When unadorned by supplementary data (for instance, satisfaction with activities), the reader cannot easily see the forest for the trees. The best chapters brought in information from studies with another perspective. Altergott recognizes the desirability of expansion of studies to include subjective aspects of behavior, stating that the "direction of linking choice, preference, and, perhaps in the future, capacity and perceived opportunity to the analysis of behavior is necessary (p. 142)."
REVIEWARTICLE
91
Other drawbacks, as noted previously, have to do with the need for greater comparability of data from one country to another (a notoriously difficult problem, not without precedent in cross-national research) and analysts' difficulty in pointing out explicit links between daily activities and national policy, somewhat ameliorated by a fine concluding chapter that attempts further definition of such linkages. In conclusion, the book is valuable as a resource for information that cannot easily be obtained elsewhere. It should be praised as an ambitious effort in a methodological tradition that has yet to mature. Hopefully, its publication will result in mutually beneficial cross-pollination with other currents of research on old age.
VA Normative Aging Study and Boston university School of Public Health
