Thematic Areas
Market and Non-Market Activities of Older Americans
Principal Investigator: Daniel S. HamermeshFunded by: Social Security Administration.
This project examines older Americans' non-market time allocation using the new American Time Use Survey. It will generate results indicating: 1) How older workers spend time among market work, household production, leisure and personal care (essentially a novel accounting exercise); 2) Patterns and determinants of how otherwise identical retired older Americans allocate their time across these last three categories and more detailed categories compared to working older Americans; and 3) Patterns and determinants of timing of activities in these two groups.
These will enable Dr. Hamermesh to infer the amount of flexibility of the kinds of activities and their timing desired by older people who are unconstrained by market work schedules. It will indicate how market work can be temporally restructured so that the remarkable decline in older Americans' paid work can be sharply reversed and cost and benefit burdens on the Social Security system eased.
This project is a subcontract through the University of Michigan's Retirement Research Center.