Unpaid productive activities during the retirement process: theoretical insights and empirical findings

Two parallel demographic trends – declining fertility and increasing longevity – are changing the population structure of most industrialized countries: there are more older and fewer younger people (European Commission, 2019). This development creates a shrinking labor force and challenges the sustainability of the welfare state, especially of pension and social security systems. An essential policy response to population aging has been to increase and extend the labor force participation of older adults (Phillipson, 2019). The extension of working lives is raising concerns about older adults’ other engagements in society and, with that, concerns about the welfare of communities and families. If older adults work longer, communities and families may lack services that older adults have traditionally provided in retirement.