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Projects
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Title:
Changes in Productive Activity in Late Life
Brief Description:
Productivity, once viewed primarily in economic terms, is now considered by researchers also
to encompass activities performed outside of traditional market environments (paid work).
These other activities include volunteer work, informal provision of long-term care to
relatives and others, childcare, helping others in one's social network with routine tasks
and errands, home maintenance, and housework. This more inclusive definition of productivity
provides the foundation for this pilot project. This Project examines how dimensions of
activity are clustered into constellations of behavior. We anticipate that some types of
behaviors are more likely to occur together, such as paid work and formal volunteering on the
one hand, and caregiving and childcare on the other. In addition, we examine how specific
activities and constellations of activities change over time. We anticipate a substitution
effect whereby persons who experience important life transitions and who take on new roles
will shift the types of productive activities in which they engage. We employ data from the
Americans' Changing Lives study, a nationally representative panel survey specifically geared
toward the study of productive activity and well-being. To establish which activities
cluster together and to determine if a scale of productive activity exists, we employ latent
class analysis techniques. In our analyses, we pay particular attention to differences by
sex and race.
Funding:
National Institute on Aging
Principal Investigators:
Jeffrey A. Burr, Principal Investigator
Frank Caro, Co-Investigator
Jan E. Mutchler, Co-Investigator
Report:
Changes in Productive Activity in Later Life
Contact:
jeffrey.burr@umb.edu
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