TO BE ACTIVE OR NOT TO BE ACTIVE, THAT IS THE QUESTION: THE PREFERENCE MODEL OF ACTIVITY IN ADVANCED AGE LUCIE'VIDOVICOV~, This paper introduces the preference model of activity in advanced age as a proposed new approach to older people's activity and employment. The model is based on the presumption that there exists a normal distribution of activity in the population and that people tend to maintain the same level of activity through the whole life cycle, even though the forms and the content of activities themselves may change. The paper argues that the position of the individual within the model will be based on preferences and values rather than variables such as age, education, or health status. The paper provides an outline of the theory of the preference model of activity in advanced age as well as preliminary evidence gained from the leisure activities of Czech older people.

Active Aging--An Introduction The current socio-political discourse in the Czech Republic, as in most of modern industrial societies, is to a large degree underlined by changing demographic conditions. 'Let's mainstream aging into our daily lives,' is the appeal of many supra-national as well as national bodies and their documents, foreseeing demographic change as one of the driving engines of future development. Whether this call is heard and implemented is a different question. Owing to a prolonged life expectancy and a reduction in the age of effective labor market exit, retirement is becoming a life stage of the middle years. This challenges the common age differentiated 'three-box' phasing of the life cycle. However it does not really contribute to the identification of an acceptable alternative--as age integrated parallel lifelong education, work and leisure would be (Riley and Riley, 1994). While economic activity is decreasing Ageing International, Fall 2005, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 343-362. 343

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towards the end of the life cycle, the proportion of the people in this life stage is increasing within European populations. These societies have shrinking opportunities to cover expenses resulting from such parallel changes due to fiscal conditions and political as well as societal will. Therefore new ways of dealing with this historically unprecedented situation are being intensively developed. One of the main paradigm shifts, at least in Europe, seems to occur with the alteration of the rhetoric of 'older people as a burden' to that of 'older people as a resource'. Its main advocates are talking about 'senior citizenship'. According to 'senior citizenship' discourse, the creation of policies in Europe is based on a wrong foundation: the narrow viewpoint concentrates only on costs and the increasing burden of the demography on the social systems, yet the real problem lies in widespread discrimination against seniors throughout all societal levels. In order to handle this problem older people themselves must be empowered so that they can participate in all areas of life--in society, in the economy and also in politics (Walker, 2002). The philosophy of senior citizenship has been translated into a more practical political program labeled 'active aging policies'. At the moment there are a number of varieties of this political program, depending on the way different agents on different levels approach it. The approach of the European Commission represents probably its most influential variant. In this case active aging is understood as, 'a coherent strategy to make aging well possible in aging societies.' In practice it means, 'educating and training throughout life, adopting healthy life styles, working longer, retiring later and being active after retirement' (European Commission, 2002), while the second part of the definition is stressed: prolonged economic activity achieved by increasing the number of employment years, postponed retirement and inclusion in socially productive activities such as voluntary work or post-retirement care provision (Avramov and Ma~kov~i, 2003). The European Union clearly approaches the strategy of active aging mainly as a way of reaching the Stockholm and Barcelona targets ~, where these two are mutually complementary in the requirement of higher participation rates of older employees (von Nordheim, 2003). This approach thus brings European 'active aging' closer to the US concept of 'productive aging' than to--at least to some extent--the broader understanding of active aging as developed by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2002) or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 1998). Something we might call 'the funnel effect' is taking place in this field. All these noble ideas are translated into policy recommendations and appear in national legislation in very narrow and restricted forms. When we look at the active aging policies in ten European countries z and their barriers and opportunities in the field of the labor market, the pension and healthcare systems and civil society (Giorgi, 2005), we find that there are serious obstacles to the implementation of the active aging concept in the broadest meaning of the term. However, huge attention is paid to the labor market and pension system

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parameters. According to the preliminary findings of the ActivAge project, active aging policies vary greatly in Europe. There are major differences in types of policies, as well as in the main actors and stakeholders, the structure of policy making in the field of active aging and main issues or political interests differ too. Those differences can be found both between nation states and welfare state regimes and within each of them (Ney, 2003; 2004). Nonetheless, all ten countries analyzed in the research project share very similar narratives about active aging policies and the identified barriers vary relatively little: active aging policies in Europe are very much political backwaters, generally uncoordinated, under-financed and often misunderstood because of the continuing stress on the economic dimension of population aging. The desirable paradigm shift from 'burden' to 'resource' as expressed in 'senior citizenship' has not been taken much further than to, 'make older people pay (at least partially) for their own aging.' Let us now for a moment adopt the narrow understanding of active aging as a labor market issue and briefly illustrate some of the features and the context in which these policies are being nowadays introduced on the example of a new European Union member state--the Czech Republic. What is the situation of older people in the Czech labor market? 3 More than 40% of the Czech population aged over 15 is economically inactive and out of it about 60% are long-term economically inactive---old age and disability pensioners. In 1993, 91% of the population aged over 60 was inactive, in 2003 the figure grew by less than 1%. In the recent 'post communist' era the share of economically inactive people in the age group of 60+ reached its Table 1 Level of Economic Activity (ILO definition) in %

Age

1993

2003

Index 1993-2003

26.6

31.2

4.6

9.4

6.6

-2.8

71.3

68.7

-2.6

55-59

26.0

42.1

16.1

60-64

12.3

13.7

1.4

3.9

2.3

-1.6

52.3

50.6

-1.7

Male 60-64 65+ Total 15+ Female

65+ Total 15+

Source: Labor Force Survey 1993-2003. Czech Statistical Office, on-line.

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maximum in 2000--93%. If we only take into account the inactivity rates for women aged over 60 the share increases to 95% (max. in 2000: 96%). When looking at the level of economic activity of older age groups between 1993 and 2003 it slightly increased in the case of the younger age groups and decreased in the case of men as well as women aged over 65 (see Table 1 ) probably largely due to a change in the pension system administration. The share of working old age pensioners, once a very common feature of the communist full-employment policy, is decreasing and in 2003 such pensioners made up only 3% of the Czech workforce, in 1996 the figure was nearly 5 per cent. 4 In the Czech Republic the level of economic activity is to a great extent determined by the traditional pension system provision built up as a two-pillar PAYGo system5 with the statutory retirement age of 62 for men and 57-61 years for women (depending on the number of children). Early retirement can be taken up three years earlier while in such a case the pension is permanently restricted. In 2003 this form of early retirement represented one third of all new retirement benefits paid out from the system. The replacement rate differs greatly for different pre-retirement income levels. Those with half the average pre-retirement income get about 77%, those with double of the average get only about 27% of their previous income (Rabugic, 2004). The possibility of combining pension income with income from paid work has been recently introduced and is restricted only by the type of the contract (at most for one year with unlimited possibility of multiple contracts). Pensions below a certain-relatively high--limit are not taxed; in the case of an employed old-age pensioner the employer makes the usual contributions to social and health insurance. It is not uncommon for older employees to be discriminated against by prior dismissal from work by redundancy, but--interestingly enough-working old-age pensioners are viewed as a high-quality and reliable workforce. Untaxed work 6 is a relatively widespread way of employing oldage pensioners (Vidovidov~, Mfftzovfi and Rabu~ic, 2005a; 2005b). National statistics show that the total number of old-age pensioners keeps growing, in parallel with rising pension insurance expenditure. The number of old-age pensioners in the Czech Republic is 1,914,219 people (18.5% of the population of the Czech Republic in 2003); that is roughly one-third higher than thirty years ago (Vidovidovfi, Mr~izovfi and Rabugic, 2005b). In 1990 7.3% of GDP was spent on the pension system while in 2003 it was already 9.1% of GDP. This pension expenditure represents 42% of the total socialhealth system expenditure. A man who retires today has on average a further 15.8 years to live, a woman with two children (the modal case) has the probability of living on average a further 22.1 years in retirement (Vidovidovfi, Mr~izovfi, and Rabugic, 2005a). To recap--in the Czech Republic there is an almost one to one ratio of economically active to inactive, and--without oversimplification--nearly all Czechs over the age of 60 are out of the labor market, if they are not involved

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in the 'grey economy', spending nearly one quarter of their life in retirement. It is thus not surprising that the Czech Republic is one of those European countries that are devoting more and more energy to reversing these trends and remedying this situation. This is not only due to the increasing fiscal burden but also to the unintended consequence of older people's diminishing life program after retirement in work-oriented societies. Active aging policies were, and to a large extent remain, intended as such a solution in a win-win constellation: they should result in a longer, healthier life bringing full satisfaction to older citizens; savings and even higher income to the state budget and governments; a great amount of know-how of older employees with minor costs to firms and a happy and bright future of prospective active retirement for younger cohorts. However, these policies do not seem to be very successful, either in terms of prolonging work activity or in terms of 'enabling aging well'. We suggest that the reason for this failure does not lie exclusively in the structural context of these policies (although objectively in many European countries it represents the most visible set of barriers to their implementation (Giorgi, 2005)), but also the policies' own format represents an enormous hindrance. It is not only that today's active aging policies are one dimensional (i.e., labor market policies) but also they are constructed and presented as a 'one-size-fits-all' solution, which is not a sustainable state in the context of growing heterogeneity of life styles and individual life strategies. It is very common to overlook or underestimate the micro social determinants and the role of the individual actor in active aging. One should ask not only questions such as, "Do we have enough jobs available, are we restricting opportunities for early retirement enough or what can we do within the framework of civil society to keep people active...?", without trying to find answer to questions such as, "How do the strategies, desires and values held by each and every one of us influence our (labor market) activity? Why do some people remain active irrespective of any policies? Why do some people rush into early retirement, regardless of parametrical changes in the pension system?". These questions about new kinds of barriers and opportunities to active aging policies became the focus of research by the Institute for Research on Social Reproduction and Integration (IRSRI) 7. The first results from the "Active aging--in between family, employment and retirement" project are presented here. This set of questions is hard to answer without questioning the taken for granted approach to active aging as the only way to age well. However, such a discussion goes beyond this current paper.

The Preference Model of Activity in Advanced Age In order to explore the thus far insufficiently described micro social influences on activities conducted in older age we will use preference theory as a springboard for developing a new theory or model of activity applied to older

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age. Preference theory was developed by Carin Hakim (2000) in the context of reconciling work and family: as far as we know it has not hitherto been used for researching old age or active aging. Since we attempt to transpose this theory into a completely different setting and also due to the frequent criticisms of Hakim's preference theory, our approach to this theory is rather eclectic. However, despite that it is impossible to overlook the overlap that this theory has with the preference model of activity in old age that we have developed. The overlap involves mainly the model's reliability, which is deduced from the existence of a 'new social scenario'; stress on the explanatory strength of preferences, values and life strategies; and the model's own triadic basis. It should be added that the model's individual components approximately copy the normal distribution--Gauss curve--which is in Hakim's case a tacit assumption. We also take on the hypothesis that within the model the explanatory strength of some commonly studied socio-demographic characteristics is weakened) The reason for this is that the preference model of activity in advanced age is based on the presumption that an emergence of the new societal scenario enabled the (relatively) free choice between activity and inactivity, while in the population the choices and life strategies related to them have a probabilistic character and a normal distribution. This new scenario of aging societies rests on a number of bases. On the one hand there is the historically unprecedented rise in life expectancy, which is---due to the second demographic transition--becoming massively observable in modern societies. Further there is the development of social security, which represents a legitimate source of income in older age and thus to large extent prevents poverty in old age. The development of individualism and post-materialism in the society in focus here brought the importance of individual c h o i c e s into the f o r e g r o u n d and intensified the desire for each individual's self-realization in all age groups. 9 Not least important is (the general threat of) economic instability, which--together with the previously mentioned factors--gradually led to the already mentioned change in discourse from 'older people as a burden' to 'older people as a (re)source'. We believe that these societal changes represented a sufficient driving potential to implement preferred choices among life strategies (activities). Thus if we presume that the new scenario is valid in the case of modern aging societies, their inhabitants will relatively 'freely' choose their life strategy in older age. We plan to research these life strategies in terms of activity versus inactivity, and view them through the lenses of active aging policy regardless of the form of the activity. We anticipate the theoretical model, which we will further analyze, to have three basic types with working labels as follows: active-work oriented, adaptive and inactive-retirement oriented. Let us now briefly characterize each of the theoretical group of individuals. The first 'active' type may represent about 10 to 20% of the population, and thus tends to be rather marginal in the society. Individuals of this type will centre their preferences on work and inten-

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349

sire activity while their strategies and choices will not be shaped by external influences. In the ideal type they will plan prolonged activity or a 'second career' and work as such will be a significant value for them. The second 'adaptive' type can be regarded as the mainstream variant, and characterizes 60 to 80% of the population. Its representatives do not have clear-cut preferences and their activity depends mainly on external conditions: thus they are sensitive to political measures and changes in the life style. In the ideal type these people plan retirement at statutory age or slightly earlier, they do not plan to work at the age of 65 and for them work is important only as a source of income. The third 'inactive' type is the opposite of the first type. Its preferences are centered on early and complete exit from the labor market and resignation to inactivity. In the ideal type individuals in this category will plan to retire early, will not work at the age of 65 and work is not important for them. Hypothetically representatives of this type will not react to any active employment policies. The types outlined here attempt to represent a kind of ideal typology in the Weberian sense without any normative or evaluative connotation. From an analytical-empirical viewpoint they are equivalent. This, however, does not necessarily apply in terms of political applicability. This typology of life strategies in the case of activities, here particularly in the case of older age groups, is directly linked to the issue of the effectiveness of policies. When analyzing the impacts of active aging policies we are faced with the fact that some individuals are very active while under the same or very similar objective conditions others are in contrast passive ~°. It is precisely this thought that led us to Table 2 Recapitulation of the Typology of Preference Model of Activity in Advanced Age Active'~

Adaptive ~

Inactive t

ca. 10-20%

ca. 80-60%

ca. 10-20%

pro-active regardless of external conditions

Without refined preferences, balance strategies depending on external conditions

tend towards inactivity and passive pursuits

Possible operationalization: does not plan to restrict work activity, does not make use of retirement, high subjective value of 'work' and the feeling of 'being useful'

Possible operationalization: retirement/inactivity timed depending on (expected) circumstances, does not plan prolonged activity, 'work' only as a source of income

Possible operationalization: plans early retirement and complete inactivity, 'work' is not a value p e r se

precondition: no reaction to pension policy

Precondition: sensitive to political measures and changes in the life cycle

precondition: no reaction to employment policy

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Ageing International/FaU 2005

the conclusion that apart from macro social influences (employment policy, the healthcare system and so forth) there are likely to exist other factors thus far empirically not described that co-determine the final outcome--the level of activity. As we already demonstrated, active aging policies concentrate above all on increasing the prevalence of conscious, active pursuits undertaken in the labor market or alternatively in 'socially productive' activities. In terms of the presented model this therefore involves an effort to enable such a shift among the outlined types that would result in the decrease in share of 'inactive' people and an increase in the share of the remaining two types, especially in the share of the most 'active" ones. The ultimate goal--to put it in a simplistic w a y - would be to extent this extreme 'active' work oriented type, which participates in the production of GDP without high maintenance costs involving policies that seem to be necessary to activate the 'adaptive' type, which tends to take advantage of the benefits of the both worlds. We intend in due course to test this model, H both for occupational and other types of activities, in a quantitative survey with a representative sample of the Czech population aged 50 to 70 years. If we succeed in empirically demonstrating the existence of these three ideal types then we can arrive at a number of findings on which policy making in aging societies can be based. Among our aims will be to find out whether individuals of the 'active' type share some characteristics that could potentially be transferred to the other two groups. Further, we will be interested in identifying policies and events within the life cycle that make the 'adaptive' type incline to one of the extreme types. We expect, for example, that the family context---e.g., the necessity to look after an ill partner or older parents--will represent a different type of 'barrier' to further work activities for each of the ideal types. 12 In the next part we discuss some initial findings about the preference model of activity in advanced age using the example of leisure activities among older Czechs.

The Preference Model of Activity in Advanced Age-An Empirical Example: Leisure Activities Within the extensive Berlin Aging Study, Horgas, Wilms and Baltes (1998) use the quasi-qualitative method of 'Yesterday interview' to describe how older adults (aged 70 to 102) structure their everyday lives at a time when the objective pressure of socially or temporally defined structures diminishes or disappears completely. This study shows that even when so-called compulsory activities (such as taking care of oneself and food intake) are the most frequent and are the most varied in the course of the day, they in fact do not consume most time in the course of the day. According to this study, the day is dominated by leisure activities. On average half of an average day (excluding sleep) was spent on leisure activities,

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351

above all watching television, followed by reading. The authors in their summary point out however that despite certain modal tendencies, studies of the structuration of the day in the case of older people point to a high heterogeneity in the researched population. For example, the sample devoted on average less than an hour daily to paid work although at least one of the respondents spent 9.5 hours daily engaging in paid work. A similarly significant variety could also be observed in the case of other activities. These findings, say Horgas, Wilms and Baltes (1998), confirm the hypothesis about the heterogeneity of aging, which reflects life-long activity patterns as well as gender roles and personal preferences. The amount of time spent on various activities provides insight into individual goals and motivation, needs and hopes and successful aging. The results---even though they involve higher age groups than those which our project targets fully confirm the theoretical expectation that activity in old age is something of a reflection of consciously as well as unconsciously held life strategies and values; that it is based on the life-long pace adapted by the given individual and that (potential) disengagement is for some a life strategy; while for others a choice; and yet for others an involuntary necessity that comes about as a consequence of an extreme change in a life situation. We attempt below to illustrate what a preference model of activity in older age might look like in terms of empirical data by conducting a secondary analysis of data from the research project Life in Old Age (Kucha~ov~, 2002) conducted in the Czech Republic in 2002 with a sample of 1,036 people aged over 60 (quota selection). The research included a question on how often respondents devoted themselves to listed activities excluding paid work. The question was as follows: "How often do you devote yourself to the following activities?" with the possibility to answer on the scale ranging from 'not at all' (coded in this text as 1) to 'very often' (coded as 5). The results are presented in Table 3. In order to test our hypothesis that the intensity of leisure activities is normally distributed in the population aged over 60 we prepared a total index of these 13 items (Cronbach's alpha 0.731). Its distribution is summarized in Figure 1. As is clear from Figure 1, the total level of leisure activities roughly approximates a normal distribution which is also confirmed in Figure 2 and by the values of mean (2.85), median (2.84) and mode (2.62). We obtain some more interesting results when we divide this index into categories gained in the factor analysis. Kucha~ovd (2002) identified four types of Czech older persons according to prevalent activities: multifaceted, manual, oriented towards helping others and passive. We were, however, at the same time interested in how these types are distributed in the population and whether it is possible to identify a normal distribution in the intensity of leisure activities. That is why we repeated the factor analysis of the given data (KM 0.751, with overall explained variance 57%), we again gained four factors related to activities (see Table 4).

Ageing International/Fall 2005

352 Table 3

Level of Activities and Their Basic Conditioning Question: How often do you devote yourself to the following activities? (Recoded scale: 1 = not at all; 5 = very often) ~5

Correlation coef.*

Activity

Watching television, video

4.46

Reading newspapers or magazines

4.01

Meeting relatives, friends

3.68

Gardening, rearing animals

3.83

-

-.16

Reading books

3.31

.30

-.30 .14

.20

Hobbies, leisure pursuits (if not mentioned)

3.29

-.17

.24

Nature outings, sport

3.23

-.16

.22

Helping one's (partner's) children (housework, babysitting etc.)

2.88

-.23

Helping neighbors or friends (in the garden, repairs etc.)

2.20

-.15

Going to the theatre, concerts, exhibitions

1.93

-.18

Voluntary work in the hometown or for the local council (gardening, cleaning around the house, small repair in the house or e.g., the primary school, help at the school with looking after children etc.)

1.76

Work at interest group organizations (pensioners', women's, environmental, religious groups, political movements etc.)

1.60

Learning languages, reading specialist literature, attending specialist lectures

1.43

Total

2.85

.37

.18 -.12

.37 -.25

.14

.30

* Pearson's correlation coefficient. Sig. at least 0.001. Hometown = size of the place of residence. ** According to evaluation on a 5-element scale: 1= not at all, 5= very often. Source: Life in Old Age (2002), own calculation.

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353

Figure 1 Level of Activity in Leisure Pursuits in Population Aged 60+

,,lllll.lli,. lllllUlllllh_ .,.IIIIIIIIIIIIIII. hlllllllllllllllllll,,._, __....d IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII m.__ low

1.6

2.0

2.4

2.8

3.2

3.5

3.9

high

Source: Life in Old Age (2002), own calculations. Figure 2 Test of Normal Distribution of the Total Index of Leisure Pursuits N o r m a l P-P Plot o f Total hadcxof leisureactivities 1,0

o

,8

E ,5 r~ ;< ,3

0,0

o3

3

,s

,8

1,o

Observed Cure Prob Source: Life in Old Age (2002), own calculation. Note: The figure was obtained from the SPSS for Windows 11.5 as a normal distribution test, using the Blom's proportion estimation formula.

354

Ageing International/Fall 2005 Table 4 Factor Matrix--Intensity of Leisure Activities

Rotated Component Matrix--How often do you engage in the following activities? (Scale recoded to l=not at all, 5= often)

1

Reading books

0.701

Going to theatre, concerts, exhibitions

0.678

Nature outings, sports

0.628

Learning languages, reading literature, attending lectures

0.570

Hobbies, leisure pursuits

0.528

Components 3

Helping one's (partner's) children

0.681

Helping neighbors, friends

0.661

Meeting relatives, friends

0.632

Gardening, animal husbandry

0.596

Activities in interest group organizations

0.833

Voluntary work in place of residence, for local council

0.759

4

Watching television, video

0.843

Reading newspapers, magazines

0.660

% of variance explained

17.5%

15.9%

13.3%

10.6%

Note: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Rotation converged in 7 iterations. Only loadings above .5 are displayed. Source: Life in Old Age (2002), own calculations. The Kaiser-Meyer-Oklin value for the factor analysis was .751, exceeding the recommended value of .6 (Kaiser 1974 in Pallant 2001) and reaching statistical significance. The four factor solution explained a total of 57.3 per cent of the variance. The rotated solution of factor analysis presented in Table 3 confirms the presence of simple structure, with all four components showing a number of strong loadings, and all variables loading substantially on only one component. The results of this analysis support the use of the four leisure activities types as a separate scale. We, however, propose an alternative labeling of the categories to previously quoted Kucha~'ov~i (2002) as follows:

Vidovi~.ovfi

355

•

Type 1. Self-oriented activities (education, culture, physical activities)

•

Type 2. Activity oriented towards primary networks (socialization in the family, neighborly help)

•

Type 3. Community-oriented activity (volunteering, organized activities)

•

Type 4. Passive entertainment (television, newspapers).

We create constitutive total indices for individual types of activities and obtain the following graphical depiction of their distribution with the normal distribution tests (Figure 3). Figure 3 Indices of Four Types of Leisure Activities

'°]

Type 2: Primary Networks Oriented

Type l: Self-Oriented Activities 400

300 200"

200

100 100

a l)ev =55

0

:~a - 3 = 1024.00

0 1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

5

4

Type 4: Passive Entertainment

Type 3: Community Oriented 600].

400

300 ¸

200

100

0

~

1

2

~1 = 1029~

3

4

5

0

i

2

3

4

5

356

Ageing International/Fall 2005

Figure 3 suggests that the model is more appropriate for some types of activities than for others. A normal distribution is maintained above all in the case of activities oriented to primary networks (meetings with family and friends, helping children) and the individual's self-cultivation (culture, education, physical activities) ~. In contrast in the case of activities that can among leisure activities be viewed as a pure 'activity prototype'--i.e., 'community orientation', we can see a significant inclination towards the lower intensity pole; thus it complements in a mirror-like fashion the 'prototype of inactivi t y ' - - p a s s i v e entertainment (i.e., watching television). However, we cannot say that passive entertainment is significantly negatively correlated with indicators of activity (e.g., index-passive X index-community r = -0.02). An obvious reason is the general spread of activities labeled here as 'passive' (watching television and reading magazines) in the whole researched population as is shown also in the relevant row in Table 3. We can offer a preliminary hypothesis according to which some of the following variables will have a significant impact on activities in older age: gender, education, health status, family status, unemployment, partner's activity, financial backing, value orientations, professional history, and so on. It is, however, also possible to voice an alternative hypothesis, namely that the tendency of an activity to have a normal distribution will lessen the influence of at least some of these variables or that their influence will vary according to the type of activity. The original preference theory itself confirms that these three types are independent of some of the usually noted socio-demographic characteristics and initial analyses of secondary data are beginning to confirm this also for models of activity in older age (see Table 5). Even though the strength of association represented by the correlation coefficients in Table 4 (as well as in Table 3) is rather small to medium (see for example Cohen 1988 in Pallant, 2001), results presented here may be suggesting that the low intensity of various forms of leisure activities is associated with variables such as subjective loneliness, unwillingness to vote in elections, not seeing the point of organizations that are involved in senior advocacy, less willingness to continue educating oneself, higher age and lower education. There are, nonetheless, interesting exceptions: subjective health status does not seem to be associated with the intensity of community-oriented activity; gender seems to be of no influence. Smaller settlements seem to be more suited for activities oriented to primary networks. Even though some authors argue the hypothesis that the scarcer the resources the higher the levels of inactivity (Lang, Rieckmann and Baltes, 2002), up to now our data do not show a relationship between different types of leisure activities and pension income. In contrast, subjective poverty (perception of oneself as being a poor person) influences the level of inactivity more significantly and in particular in the area of activities related to the development of the individual's personal potential.

Vidovi~ovfi

357 Table 5 Coefficients of Association--Indices of Leisure Activities

Age Gender Education Size of residence Plans to vote in election Sees the point of senior advocacy Plans to continue his education Feels lonely Subjective health status Frequency of contacts with children Subjective poverty Evaluation of present life stage (pos/neg) Income

Total activity

T2: Orient. to TI: Selfprimary ~orientation networks

-.245*

-.216"

.277*

' .400*

T3: T4: Passive Community orientation entertainment

-.216"

-. 177* .212"

.193"

-.230*

-.199"

-.442*

-.588*

-.178" -.274*

.163"

.-.321" -.187"

-.250*

-.240* .229 *

-.235*

-.206* -.217"

-. 168" -. 168

Note: Only coefficients r (age)/Sommer's D > .16 are listed; * p < 0,001; (two-tailed). The intensity of activity in the total indices was measured on the scale of l(low) to 5 (high) (recoded). Note: Size of residence: l=village; Plans to vote: l=no; Does it make sense to be organised: 1 = definitely yes; Plans education: l=yes; Feels lonely: l=yes; Sub. health status: 1= all healthy; Frequency of contacts: 1 = none; Sub. poverty: 1= rich; Evaluation of present stage of life: 1= good. Source: Life in Old Age (2002), own calculations.

Discussion Within the research project Life in Old Age the intensity o f w o r k activity was not m e a s u r e d so we cannot m a k e e v e n a p p r o x i m a t e generalizations f r o m the o b s e r v e d level o f leisure activities on the strategies in the field o f p a i d w o r k - - t h a t is the area m o s t significant in active aging policies. Despite that it is possible to get a sense o f the validity of the p r e f e r e n c e m o d e l also in the herein analyzed activities of people aged o v e r 60. I f we a s s u m e that the thirteen types of activities outlined a b o v e are not mutually exclusive we can expect that individuals can be i n v o l v e d in m o r e activities at the s a m e t i m e or subsequently. O u r total index o f activities (see Figure 1) and its distribution

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seem to confirm that c.10% of the population of people over 60 is intensively involved in various types of activities--i.e., the value of the index at most approximates 2.1; while with the second 10% of the population engagement tends to be rather low and the value of the index is higher than 3.6. The remaining circa eighty percent concentrates around the value of 3.0; which as a reply to the question, "How often do you engage in these activities?" means 'sometimes' and may be translated as: 'it depends.' It is clear from Tables 3 and 5 that the observed intensity of activity may vary depending on selected socio-demographic characteristics. With the majority of activities the intensity decreases with higher age but, for example, in the case of activities that active aging policy understands as 'socially productive', for instance involvement in civil society, it seems that age does not play a role. This would confirm our hypothesis based on preference theory, that activity is a matter of a chosen life strategy and personal values rather than a structurally determined policy outcome. Also the relative weakness of the correlation and association coefficients presented in those two tables would support the idea that there is more to the different role engagements than the simple socio-demographic context of the individual respondent. The issue of activities in old age gathers momentum with the increasing share of older people in modern societies. It is interesting that these aging societies are at the same time societies with the longest history of social welfare and pension systems. Nonetheless with gradual changes in the demographic structures of these societies there also appears the tendency to gradually decrease the significance of pension income provided by the state (Guillemard and van Gunsteren, 1991; Walker, 2002); respectively restrict its importance to the latest possible part of the life cycle; and to return the provision of old age income back to the individual to the greatest possible extent. Liberal active aging policy is the most significant example of such a strategy. However, the more important criticism of active aging policies relates to their 'blindness' towards activities outside the labor market--that is above all provision of care in the family and the involvement in non-institutional structures of civil society. Another criticism of this almost normative approach is that it does not provide enough space for non-standard life situations such as serious health impediments, which can increase in number in higher age. Both criticisms seem to suggest that the major problem of active aging policies is the restrictive listing of pursuits that are considered an 'activity'. A number of critics of this approach will ask whether a person with a seriously limited ability to move is automatically also inactive and whether, for example, social services belong within active aging policy in the same way as, for example, the normally included and highly stressed employment policies. It is clear that we face mainly a question of the definition of active aging and activity itself. Observations on these definitions will thus also form part of the IRSRI "Active

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aging: in between family, employment and retirement" project briefly outlined here. At a more general level this question also relates to the problem of defining successful aging. Is it possible to claim that a person who spends most of the day resting, ages in a worse manner than a person who engages in a number of activities during the day whether these are necessary or voluntary (Horgas, Wilms and Baltes, 1998)? Such a conclusion would be in line with the general sociological and psychological developmental definition of aging but it takes very little account of the true significance of personal preferences, personal definitions of quality of life and above all implies that inactive aging is worse than the active mode. We would like to propose an alternative to such a priori evaluative statements with our preference model of activity in advanced age in introducing (at least) three, quantitatively varied but qualitatively equal life (and work) strategies. In the next phase of research we need to concentrate on a more profound operationalization of 'activity' and 'inactivity'. In the Czech context we witness the continuing cultural understanding of retirement as a d e s e r v e d rest with quite substantial preference for early retirement and legal definition of retirement w h i c h - - m a y b e not literally but actually--rules out the possibility of interrupting the pension provision and becoming a 100% employee again (there is no flexible retirement). Despite this, the current legitimacy of combining socially defined benefits and work (official as well as on the grey market) is high. Therefore, it is impossible to put a plain equation mark between retirement and inactivity. A more sophisticated measure for future studies is clearly needed, since in the case of the Czech population (and we can presume that this is a general cultural fact in modern societies) inactivity cannot be measured in terms of e.g., watching television either, as it is a massively widespread activity. Moreover, the preference theory applied to the activity in older age and its presuppositions needs to be elaborated in more detail. The reliability of preference theory lies in the emergence of a 'new scenario' and the possibility of 'free choice'. Further research should take a closer look whether such a new scenario exists in all modern aging societies and to what extent preferences are determined by existing social structures, in other words: how free and undetermined are free choices? Another interesting question would be to what extent the proposed model is a universal o n e - - f o r various sub populations, types of activities and so on. Results of the secondary analysis presented here provide a glimpse into the preference model of activity in higher age and we only begin the discussion about the inter-relation between the individual preferences of older people and the active aging policies. We expect that future research will answer the question whether in the Czech Republic we can identify such a model of activity in older age which de facto means that some people are active under (almost) any circumstances while others cannot be encouraged to be active by any policy and that a large share of older people are in between these two

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extremes. And if we will be able to demonstrate the existence of this model in different types of activities, we will try to explore the value of active aging policies for these marginal groups and suggest what the ideal set up of active aging policies would be for the mainstream type which wants to have the best of both worlds. As Atchley puts it, older people might wish to remain voluntarily in the workforce for the developmental reasons, or they might wish to retire voluntarily for developmental reasons. Crucially, we need to avoid policies that suggest coercion in either respect (in Phillipson, 2002: 27). Therefore we would also like to contribute to a discussion on what can be considered successful and what active aging and whether (work) activity is really a common denominator in both cases.

Biographical Notes Corresponding author: Lucie Vidovic'ovfi, Masaryk University in Bmo, Faculty of Social Studies, Jo~tova 10, B mo 60200, Czech Rep. E-mail: [email protected]. Lucie Vidovi6ovfi is research assistant and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. She has a long-term research interest in sociology of aging, age discrimination, attitudes towards aging, active aging and age-mainstreaming. She works as a consultant on a number of projects such as Aging in the media and Teaching about aging, and cooperates with different governmental and NGO bodies in the field of senior advocacy.

Acknowledgments This study was written and the preference model of activity in advanced age was developed with support from the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (Research project MSM002 1622408 Reproduction and integration of society). The support of the European Commission, which funded the ActivAge project and which represents the information base for the presented theory (Contract: HPSE-CT-2001-000102), and the Research Institute for Labor and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic, as a source of the presented empirical data, is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes 1. According to the Stockholm target half of the population of the EU aged 55 to 64 will be employed in 2010. The Barcelona target involves the progressive increase in the actual average age of terminating economic activity by 5 years. 2. Countries involved in the ActivAge project: Austria, Czech Rep., Germany, France, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Switzerland and United Kingdom. More information on: www.iccrintemational.org/activage. 3. The following text is based on the Labor Force Survey 1993-2003, own calculations. All quoted parameters are observed on the basis of ILO methodology. 4. The massive exit of those working old age pensioners from the labour market in the early 1990s is

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regarded as the main cause behind the 'Czech low-unemployment miracle', since in the first half of this decade the unemployment rate was very low despite the ongoing economic transformation. 5. The first pillar is a pension provided by the state with a replacement rate of c. 47% for average preretirement income and 27% for twice the average pre-retirement income. The second pillar is voluntary private pension savings, a possibility available since 1995, which so far represents only a minor addition to the pension income. Some social care and social help benefits are available for those of higher age, too. 6. Grey economy = semi-legal employment without a contract and payment of financial contribution, often for minimum wage. In the case of employing people of pre-retirement age, the term can also relate to work for a legally determined minimum wage from which minimum insurance is paid and the remaining sum that makes up the employee's full salary is paid in cash without any documents which has a negative impact on the amount of financial contributions to the state budget and also on the future amount of pension and some social benefits for employees. 7. Institute for Research on Social Reproduction and Integration (IRSRI). For further information about the project please refer to: http://ivris.fss.muni.cz. 8. In case of reconciling work and family these are: e.g., education, social class, etc. 9. Some of the authors argue that this development is in particularly visible due to the quick and condensed social change occurring in the 1990s after the Czech Velvet Revolution (fall of communism era). 10. One of the tasks in the initial phase of the project is to define activity and passivity. However, if we take into consideration existing definitions of active aging then it is only activities on the labor market and 'socially productive' activities (i.e., intensive provision of care in the family, community work etc.) that can be understood as 'active' pursuits. 11. A representative survey of Czech population is scheduled for May 2006. 12.The question of adult children providing care for elderly parents is one of the sub-projects of IRSRI. See web page for detailed information. 13.Tests of normaldistributions of indices (mean/median/modus): Index 1(self-orientation): (2.6/2.6I 2.8); Index 2 (primary networks): (3.0/3.0/3.2); Index 3 (community): (1.6/1.0/1.0); Index 4 (passive): (4.2/4.5/5.0).

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