Search results for ‘Author:"uhlenberg peter"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 3 of 3
The burden of aging: a theoretical framework for understanding the shifting balance of caregiving and care receiving as cohorts age
- Author:
- UHLENBERG Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Gerontologist, 36(6), December 1996, pp.761-767.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Unless changes occur in the way cohorts age, the future aging of the population will make the burden of caring for older persons an increasingly salient political issue in American society. There is no reason, however, why aging in the future should replicate the pattern of aging that currently exists. A helpful step toward understanding what social changes would reduce the burden that aging cohorts place on society is the development of aging theory. This article develops a theoretical framework that explicates factors determining the level of care given and care received by cohorts moving through different stages of later life.
The social separation of old and young: a root of ageism
- Authors:
- HAGESTAD Gunhild O., UHLENBERG Peter
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Issues, 61(2), June 2005, pp.343-360.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Ageism has been the focus of numerous publications, while age segregation is a neglected topic. Ageism on a micro-individual level is linked to segregation on a macro level in a segregation-ageism cycle. Possible linking mechanisms, which might help break this cycle, can be found on a meso level of social networkstheir structure and functions. Data from the United States and the Netherlands show that non-family networks are strongly age homogeneous. Based on earlier work by a range of scholars, the authors suggest that time, group identity, perspective-taking, and affective ties are factors that must be considered with regard to the functions of networks. Addressing meso level mechanisms poses challenges to social policy as well as research.
Age-segregation in later life: an examination of personal networks
- Authors:
- UHLENBERG Peter, GIERVELD Jenny de Jong
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 24(1), January 2004, pp.5-28.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
In a rapidly changing society, young adults may play an important role in teaching older adults about social, cultural and technological changes. Thus older people who lack regular contact with younger people are at risk of being excluded from contemporary social developments. But how age-segregated are older people? The level of age-segregation of older people can be studied by examining the age-composition of personal social networks. Using NESTOR-LSN survey data from The Netherlands, the authors are able to determine the number of younger adults that people aged 55–89 years identify as members of their social networks, and to examine the factors that are associated with segregation or integration. The findings show that there is a large deficit of young adults in the networks of older people, and that few older people have regular contact with younger non-kin. If age were not a factor in the selection of network members, one would expect the age distribution of adult network members to be the same as the age distribution of the entire adult population, but the ratio of actual to expected non-kin network members aged under 35 years for those aged 65–74 years is only 0.10. And only 15 per cent of the population aged 80 or more years has weekly contact with any non-kin aged less than 65 years. The number of children is strongly related to the total number of younger network members, because most younger network members are adult children. Further, participating in organisations (work and volunteer settings) that include people of diverse ages increases the likelihood of an older person having significant cross-age interactions with non-kin.