The effect of roles prescribed by active ageing on quality of life across European regions

Abstract

The active ageing approach supports a set of roles or activities that are supposed to be beneficial for older adults. This paper reassesses the benefits of activities for the quality of life by (a) analysing many activities at the same time to control each other, (b) using panel data to detect the effects of activities over time, and (c) performing separate analyses for four European regions to test the context-specificity of the effects. The effects of roles in later life are tested on panel data from three waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) project. The results of fixed-effects regression show that only some activities – volunteering, participating in a club and physical activity – increase the quality of life, and that care-giving within the household has the opposite effect. Moreover, the beneficial effects are much weaker and less stable than the other types of regression suggest; they are beneficial only in some regions, and their effect is much weaker than the effects of age, health and economic situation. Therefore, the active ageing approach and activity theory should reflect the diverse conditions and needs of older adults to formulate more-context-sensitive and less-normative policy recommendations.

How Active Are European Seniors—Their Personal Ways to Active Ageing? Is Seniors’ Activity in Line with the Expectations of the Active Ageing Strategy?

“…Low ratings of mental well-being as a reaction to the surrounding society (A4, A5, A6) were associated with a higher willingness to actively participate in political groups. Such an interaction between mental health and social participation is indicated by Lakomý [66]. Very often, a high frequency of attending religious services was associated with a lower frequency of meeting friends (and vice versa).…”

“…For the analysis, we chose question C16 related to participation in religious ceremonies (other than funerals and weddings) because these are activities of sensitive people and represent a traditional form of integration [9,41] (i.e., family and religions). The availability of healthcare plays an increasingly important role in the assessment of subjective QoL with age [22,66], which is why variable B32 was selected to show the respondents' healthcare assessment in the countries analysed. Variable A6 was chosen as the respondents' assessment of the care and volunteering of other members of society [22].…”

“…The research presented above corresponds to the examination of the impact of AA activities on subjective QoL, considering changes in roles and conditions (employment, social participation, physical activities and caregiving) and socio-economic, cultural and institutional contexts [66].…”

“…According to AA, one of the activities of seniors is volunteering. Research shows that volunteering, as a form of social commitment and socialisation, has positive health benefits to individuals, especially the more sensitive people, and affects their well-being [66,67]. Tanskanen et al [68] indicated that older people who help relatives and friends by giving informal monetary help and charitable donations, often participate and are more likely to engage in pro-social activity, volunteering and charity.…”

Individual value orientation, social norms, and volunteering outcomes in later life

“…This text critically evaluates the most common and influential theoretical perspective of the active aging approach, which emanates from activity theory. The dominance of this approach is illustrated by the reviews of Adams et al (2011) and Cattan et al (2011) and concerns both academic literature (Lakomý, 2021; Vidovićová, 2018) and social policy initiatives (AGE platform Europe, 2011; Foster and Walker, 2015; World Health Organization (WHO), 2012).…”