Productive Aging Paradigm in Asian Countries

Coordinator: Hong, Song-Iee, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work

Project Description and Scope

In modern aging/aged society, productive aging paradigm holds great promise for engagement of older adults to our society. Engaging older adults in productive activities is seen as a strategy to strengthen communities and improve the well-being of older adults in their later life. For example, in most of developed/developing countries, senior volunteer and service programs are growing in number, emerging as part of the sweeping demographic change that is making older adults one of the nation’s greatest and most underutilized resources. Despite growing evidence that involvement in productive activities has beneficial health and longevity effects on older adults, their actual participation in these productive activities is relatively lower in most of Asian countries, compared to Western developed countries.

Focus on the understanding of these unequal dynamics on productive engagement in later life, this reading group will discuss the following topics:

  • Theories and concepts of productive, successful, and active aging and their applications in Asian countries
  • Comparison and overview of productive engagement in later life between Asian countries and Western counties.
  • Understanding ongoing involvement in paid and unpaid roles that make economic and social contributions as the growing potential resources of the aging population.
  • A diversity of challenges to close the gap between actual and potential involvement of older adults in productive activities.
  • Powerful strategies to increase productive engagement in later life: organizational structures vs. individual characteristics.
  • Potential ways to maximize older adults’ engagement in productive roles and its benefits to our aging society: Social interventions aimed at organizations, by public and private policies.

The scholarly work on institutional capacity for productivity in late life is in its early development. Through the collaboration of interdisciplinary research team, understanding more complex dynamics in productive engagement based on individual and institutional phenomenon can encourage more innovative and systematic scholarly work on the conceptualization and measurement of productive aging which can be applied in Asian counties. With the aim of enhancing knowledge building on the institutional capacity of organizations to encourage productive activities among older adults, this reading group can inspire, initiate and develop independent research and interdisciplinary collaborative research.

Initial Reading List

  • Morrow-Howell, N., Hinterlong, J. E., & Sherraden, M. N. (2004) Productive aging: Concepts and challenges. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Pearce, J. L. (1993). Volunteers: The organizational behavior of unpaid workers. London: Routledge.
  • Rowe, J. & Kahn, R. (1998). Successful aging. New York: Random House.
  • Riley, M. W., Kahn, R. L., & Foner, A. (Eds.). (1994). Age and structural lag: Societies’ failure to provide meaningful opportunities in work, family, and leisure. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
  • Rimmerman, C. A. (1997). The new citizenship: Unconventional politics, activism, and service. Boulder, CO:Westview.
  • O'Reilly, P., & Caro, F. G. (1994). Productive aging: An overview of the literature. Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 6(3), 39-71.

List of Participants