Suchergebnisse

The active ageing policy supports several types of activities, including labour force participation, caregiving, social participation, and physical activity. The paper illustrates the prevalence of supported activities across individual characteristics and four supra-national European regions to assess how these activities are available for specific groups of older people. The analysis draws on wave 6 from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe held in 2015. A set of figures describes the availability of activities sorted by gender, age, health status, and the level of education in 17 European countries divided into four regions, and thus, presents the unavailable descriptive data important for researchers and policymakers. The results most of all show that the majority of the 50+ population engages in vigorous physical activity, whilst labour force participation and caregiving concern about one-third of it, and other activities much less. The findings show the inadequacy of the active ageing as a uniform context-insensitive EU policy and detect its potential for raising inequalities in later life, whilst the theoretical implications are discussed.

The most important roles in later life – those of parent, spouse, and grandparent – are all located within a family. Thus, the family structure and availability of close relatives is an important predictor of the subjective quality of life (QoL). At the same time, the current demographic, economic, and cultural changes cause the increasing importance of intergenerational relationships within a broader family structure. This research examines the association between various forms of individual family structure and the subjective QoL in the European context, including its gender differences. Whilst the role of having a partner is beneficial only for men, most of the associations are similar regardless of gender. The relationship between family structure and the subjective QoL is generally stable but rather weak (parents, siblings) or negligible (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren). Furthermore, most associations are stable over time and geographical context, which is also true for the milder positive role of partnership and number of siblings, and the negative association of a number of living parents. Theoretical (fluent, optional relationships; solidarity vs ambivalence model), practical (no negative long-term impact of less stable partnerships), and methodological (quality of relationships) implications are addressed in the discussion.

A growing body of scholarship examines the social and personal benefits of volunteering across the life course. However, less is known about how this experience of volunteering varies across different national contexts and how the impact of volunteering is shaped by micro- and macro-conditions. This article utilizes a cross-national multilevel regression analysis of European Values Survey data to explore the benefits of volunteering for two distinct sets of aging populations in the EU: those identified as "materialists" and "postmaterialists." It finds that a positive association between volunteering and one key indicator of quality of life ("control over life") generally exists for postmaterialists, while it is more positive in countries with stronger familial norms among materialists. Hence, the role of volunteering in later life is not as uniform as suggested by the active aging approach.

AbstractThe 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.

Social participation amongst older adults is considered generally beneficial and is supported by active ageing policies in Europe. However, efforts to increase the quality of life and enhance the ageing experience may have the unintended consequence of increasing later life inequalities. This study uses six waves from SHARE to illustrate how social participation develops over time and how it is structured by education, financial situation and health status in the context of five European welfare regimes. The level of participation slightly increases over time for the population 55+, whilst the inequalities in access to these activities and their outcomes remain stable. Therefore, support of these activities does not strengthen or reduce inequalities amongst older adults – it may rather legitimise the inequalities in its emphasis on individual responsibilities. These findings suggest that the active ageing approach needs to become more context-sensitive or replaced by other social policy approaches.

Abstract
The active ageing policy supports several types of activities, including labour force participation, caregiving, social participation, and physical activity. The paper illustrates the prevalence of supported activities across individual characteristics and four supra-national European regions to assess how these activities are available for specific groups of older people. The analysis draws on wave 6 from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe held in 2015. A set of figures describes the availability of activities sorted by gender, age, health status, and the level of education in 17 European countries divided into four regions, and thus, presents the unavailable descriptive data important for researchers and policymakers. The results most of all show that the majority of the 50+ population engages in vigorous physical activity, whilst labour force participation and caregiving concern about one-third of it, and other activities much less. The findings show the inadequacy of the active ageing as a uniform context-insensitive EU policy and detect its potential for raising inequalities in later life, whilst the theoretical implications are discussed.

As mediation and its support across the European Union have been growing, we can assume that the public is better aware of this option of dispute resolution. The law acquaintance with the focus on mediation has not been studied extensively, although the identification of the current state is crucial for formulating the effective strategies for its broader use. The aim of this paper based on the quantitative survey on a representative sample in the Czech Republic is to examine the mediation awareness and its differences across individual characteristics. The statistical analysis identifies very low awareness of mediation and its aspects. Moreover, this knowledge is higher among people with higher education, among middle-aged people and older people living in bigger municipalities. Based on the findings, the authors suggest that targeted campaigns organised by the state should be conducted through the channels accessible to the sociodemographic groups with lower awareness of mediation.