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The Future of Old Age
By Lucy Rose Fischer and Kay Banister
Schaffer
From Older
Volunteers: A Guide to Research and Practice
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:
- The productive potential of the older population constitutes
an important social and economic resource.
- It is a social and public
responsibility to create opportunities for productive aging through
volunteerism, paid employment, and
entrepreneurship
- Although an older volunteer force cannot solve
social problems it can have a substantial and meaningful impact
on social welfare
- 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.
* * *
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.
Older
Volunteers: A Guide to Research and Practice
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Permission is granted for organizations to download and reprint this article. Reprints must provide full acknowledgment of source, as provided:
Excerpted from Older
Volunteers: A Guide to Research and Practice by Lucy Rose Fischer and Kay Banister
Schaffer. © 1993 Sage Publications. pp 215-217.
Found in the Energize website library at: http://www.energizeinc.com/art.html
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