Numerous role shifts occur between the ages of 55 and 74 as individuals typically relinquish paid work and somefamily roles and make choices about how to usetheir expandingdiscretionary time. Using datafrom thefirst two waves oftheAmericans' Changing Lives survey, weexamine theassociation between paid work status andformal and informal volunteer activity. No evidencefor an association between paidworkstatus and informal volunteering isfound, suggesting that helpingfriends, neighbors, and relatives occurs independent ofconstraints associated with paid work. A relationship is established for formal volunteering, however. Among individuals who were not volunteeringforformal organizations at thetimeof thefirstinterview, those whoworked part-time, those who had not worked in either wave, aswell as those whostopped work between interviews were significantly more involved in volunteering than were full-time workers.As the population of the United States continues to age, questions about how older individuals use their time become more pressing. According to U.S. census data, individuals aged 55 to 74-those approaching later life together with those commonly referred to as the "young-old" -numbered more than 42 million in the year 2000, making up 230/0 of the total adult population aged 25 and over (U.S. Bureau of the Census 200 1). Projections suggest that by the >I-

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Childhood SES and adult SES both had relationships with cognitive status and, to a lesser degree, change in cognition in later life.

On the basis of data from the 1998 and 2000 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, this study tested two alternative hypotheses, role overload and role extension, about the relationship between volunteering and spousal caregiving among older married persons. Spousal caregiving was not significantly associated with the likelihood of formal or informal volunteering for men; however, female caregivers were found to be less likely than noncaregivers to have engaged in formal or informal volunteering to a certain extent, thus lending partial support to the role overload hypothesis. Functional health status and other human and cultural capital resources were significant predictors of both formal and informal volunteering for both men and women. Future studies need to examine in more depth the effect of spousal caregiving on volunteering, taking caregiving burden and stress into consideration, to more fully understand these two types of productive activity in later life.A ccording to data collected through a supplement to the September 2005 Current Population Survey, 30.2% of persons aged between 55 and 64 years and 24.8% of those aged 65 years and older volunteered in a variety of

This measurement strategy provides a foundation for future research into how experts can employ productive activity clusters to understand better well-being across the life course. This is important because our results show that many activities do not occur independently but rather are linked in patterned ways.

older persons, productive activities, subjective well-being,

Our results provide support for the hypothesis that caregivers are embedded in networks that provide them with more opportunities for volunteering. Additional research on the motivations for volunteering and greater attention to the context and hierarchy of caregiving and volunteering are needed.

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