The Future of Old Age

By Lucy Rose Fischer and Kay Banister Schaffer
From Older Volunteers: A Guide to Research and Practice, Sage Publications, 1993, pp. 215-217

He is 79, in reasonably good health, thin, and muscular. He lives with his wife in a cottagelike Florida home, surrounded by fruit trees—orange, banana, grapefruit, mango, and avocado. He likes to work in his garden, and he gives boxes of fruit as presents to his friends and neighbors. When asked about how he likes retirement, he smiles and says, “There is no future to old age. That’s what I always say. There’s no future to old age.”

It is a cliche—that childhood and youth look to the future but the only future for old age is death. But it is not really true, especially today. When Social Security first was enacted in the United States in the 1930s, average life expectancy was about age 47. For those who survived to retire, Social Security was intended to provide a small stipend for the few remaining years. Now, in the 1990s, many people live a third of their lives postretirement. So living, not dying, is the future of old age.

Our current social policies and most of our public expenditures on aging focus on old age as a terminal stage. The problems of old age—frailty and sickness—cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The lion’s share of the aging budget, both federal and state, is for health and long-term care. Although some publicly supported programs provide activities for senior citizens, the budget for these projects is almost negligible.

It is time to refocus. We need to develop social definitions and public policies that are future focused—that offer meaningful futures to older citizens and that use their capacities to help shape a better future world for everyone. We need to re-envision our aging policies on the basis of the following premises:

  1. The productive potential of the older population constitutes an important social and economic resource.
  2. It is a social and public responsibility to create opportunities for productive aging through volunteerism, paid employment, and entrepreneurship
  3. Although an older volunteer force cannot solve social problems it can have a substantial and meaningful impact on social welfare
  4. It is the responsibility of a public-private partnership to invest in and support an older volunteer force.

These premises are interrelated, as we discuss below.

  1. The older population constitutes an important resource. In part, this is a matter of perspective—how older people are seen. Much discussion has taken place, on all levels of government, about how to reduce governmental expenditures on caring for the elderly. It may be important simply to review our thinking—not just how much it costs to provide services, but how much and in what ways the older population does and can contribute. According to a recent report, ‘persons at or beyond the retirement age may have more to give and more reason to benefit from national service than any other age group” (Danzig & Szanton, 1986, cited in Freedman, 1988, p 68) Perhaps we should consider establishing a National Senior Volunteer Corps to parallel the Peace Corps, which was largely youth volunteer movement, and to galvanize and energize a volunteer movement of older persons. Current programs for elder volunteers (such as RSVP and Foster Grandparent) would provide a good starting point, but much more substantial support is needed to create a national older volunteers movement.
  2. It is a public responsibility to create opportunities for productive aging. Productive aging is not merely a private or individual matter. Individual alder persons can choose to continue working, to begin a new career, or to volunteer. But efforts to engage in such productive activities often encounter barriers, including disincentives to remain in the labor force, age discrimination, negative attitudes about the capacities of older persons, and disparaging remarks about the appropriateness of working beyond “normal” retirement age. Public programs and policies can use incentives and opportunities to address the whole system of aging. It is important, for the sake of individual older persons and also for society, that opportunities for productive aging include both paid and unpaid work. What is needed are choices—varieties of opportunities and prospects for maximizing the productive contributions of older persons.
  3. An older volunteer force can have a meaningful impact on social welfare. Even if older volunteers cannot be expected to “solve” problems of drugs, crime, teen pregnancy and so forth, older persons have time to give and skills and life experiences to offer. Their contributions can make a difference, both for individuals and for their communities. An older volunteer working with teenagers at risk commented: “Me, I don’t have an education, but I have an education what I went through in life, in real life, and that’s what I teach them” (Freedman, 1988, p. 23).
  4. Investing in an older volunteer force is both a public and a private responsibility. As our research review and case study findings show, lack of resources often is an obstacle to the development of volunteer programs. We noted also that few programs cover liability insurance for either volunteers or clients because small organizations cannot afford the costs. To maximize the productive potential of our older population will require additional funding from both the public and private sectors.

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Volunteerism is a major social phenomenon in this country Older volunteers in particular constitute a powerful force that already contributes 5ubstafltially to the welfare of our society. But we need to do much more for the future of old age. We believe that there is an untapped potential for developing an older volunteers’ movement. But to realize this potential will require efforts that go well beyond business as usual. We need creative strategies for recruiting and working with older volunteers. We also need to expand public-private investments in programs for older volunteers and to develop a new social vision of the last third of life.

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