Finally, the question of whether the chosen deadlines for preparation for old age changed over time was also of interest. For Germany, the chosen deadlines in all fve examined preparation domains proved to be relatively stable over the 6-year period with only a few changes: More generally, the deadlines for the earliest time of onset were set only about 2 to 3 points earlier for each time point, whereas the deadlines for the latest time remained almost unchanged and, after statistically controlling for other infuences, were set only about half a point earlier for each time point (Lang & Rupprecht, 2020).

The temporal structure of ageing preparation also points to another signifcant issue, namely, the possibility that people move outside normative expectations in their preparatory actions. For example, according to the prevailing norm (see Fig. 4.5), someone may start preparing for old age too early or even too late in the view of many people and thus deviate from the expectation. Those who prepare for old age too early may hear from their immediate environment that this is not necessary after all and is premature: "You still have all the time in the world" and "Don't worry about it." Conversely, those who, after many years of working life, do not make any preparations for old age and who do not build up reserves, frequently change their place of residence and social environment, and live in the here and now, will probably occasionally hear or ask themselves the question of how things are to continue in later life. Such deviations from normative expectations of preparation for old age also raise the question of why one should invest time and resources in preparing for one's old age in the frst place. What subjective benefts and perhaps also costs do people associate with their preparatory actions?

#### **4.3.4 Subjective Benefits and Evaluation of Ageing Preparation**

When people prepare for their old age, they are investing time and personal resources in an uncertain future that leaves open the extent to which the expectations, wishes, and goals of the preparatory actions will ever be achieved. In addition, there may also be undesirable consequences or side effects of preparatory actions: Those who set aside money for old age, for example, forgo fulflling a wish right away and accept that there may be an economic crisis or monetary devaluation that wipes out the reserves. Every preparatory action is accompanied by expectations, experiences, or even attitudes that concern the subjective benefts or the subjective costs of preparation in the future, but also in the present. The subjective beneft of preparatory actions can, for example, consist in the fact that—by preparing for old age—one expects to retain more autonomy and independence, to relieve the burden on other people or oneself, or to obtain more security. The subjective costs of preparatory actions can relate to the fact that one limits oneself in everyday life, that one experiences burdens, or that one risks that preparatory actions prove to be useless in the end.

In addition, it happens that people postpone important tasks in order to get relief from time or task pressure in the present and thus gain time for other tasks and plans. As a result, postponing tasks to a later time leads to getting a quick beneft right now. This behavior is often accompanied by an attitude or mindset in which people subjectively devalue or even suppress the costs or burdens that arise later as a result of postponing or deferring. In psychological literature, this phenomenon is also referred to as *temporal discounting*, because possible consequences of (non-) action for one's future are not considered or are even suppressed. On the other hand, those who are willing to forego quick benefts for later rewards show a strong future preference in this sense. In contrast, we speak of present preference when people prefer the immediate benefts of their actions to possible future benefts (Löckenhoff, 2011; Zimbardo & Boyd, 2009).

How people evaluate the benefts and costs of certain preparatory actions for themselves or other people in their environment can therefore vary greatly depending on their life circumstances and conditions. To this end, the project *Ageing as Future* investigated how people experienced the benefts and costs of their own preparatory actions (Kim-Knauss et al., 2020): The benefts of preparation for old age encompassed the extent to which preparation contributes to maintaining one's own independence, providing relief for others, and giving oneself a sense of increased security. The subjective costs referred to the extent of experienced burden and risks associated with preparatory action in the respective life domains.

In most life domains, older people experience more personal benefts in their preparatory activities than younger respondents, although these age differences are more pronounced in the USA, Germany, and the Czech Republic. There are also domain-specifc age differences regarding the experienced costs of preparatory action when it comes to subjective restrictions, burdens, or risks. In particular, when it comes to preventing loneliness, preparing for care, and preparing for dying and death, older people experience more burdens and risks than younger adults. This may be because older people also have more experience with the vagaries of caregiving, of personal relationships over the life course, and also in terms of powers of attorney, wills, and inheritance when it comes to dying and death. However, cultural differences between countries also play a role. In the two Chinese countries, for example, more subjective costs and burdens are associated with preparing for old age in most life domains, with the exception of housing, whereas in Western countries, greater emphasis is placed on the subjective benefts of making one's own preparations in these domains (cf. Fig. 4.6).

In a further step, we examined the extent to which the subjective benefts of preparatory action relate to one's own self or to other people. Some of the subjective benefts of ageing preparation involve, for example, a relief from worries or serve to

Note: 2018 survey; shown in T values with 95% confdence intervals around the mean (solid line). The dashed lines indicate the range of values of half a standard deviation (±5).  Other benefts, on the other hand, relate to close relatives and their relief, to intergenerational cohesion or to the prevention of conficts. In the comparison of the USA, Germany, and Hong Kong, there were clear and expected differences in this regard (Kim-Knauss et al., 2020): While in Hong Kong there was hardly any difference between self-related benefts of preparatory action and the subjective benefts for others, in Germany and the USA, the self-related benefts clearly outweighed the benefts related to others.

In all cultures, there was also a positive correlation between the expected benefts of preparation for old age and an optimistic view of the future. However, the relationship differed regarding whether preparatory action served more to relieve one's own burden and provide self-related benefts or whether one hoped that preparatory action would relieve the burden on one's own relatives. Whereas in Hong Kong participants who were more optimistic were the ones who hoped that their own preparatory action would also relieve the burden on themselves and beneft others, there were no such correlations in Germany and the USA. There, the more optimistic the respondents were, the more they expected benefts for themselves (Kim-Knauss et al., 2020).

#### **4.3.5 Subjective Norms of Responsibility for Ageing Preparation**

Another question of the project *Ageing as Future* deals with the subjective perceptions of individual and societal responsibility for preparation for old age. Do people believe that they are responsible for their own preparation and that they can infuence it? To what extent do people believe that the society is responsible for ageing preparation? For example, one may expect that in Germany, responsibility for fnancial ageing preparation is largely attributed to the governmental social security and pension systems. Furthermore, in other domains such as end-of-life preparation, people may place strong value on self-determination and accordingly see the responsibility as primarily their own.

Possible age differences in the attribution of responsibility for ageing preparation may also be a result of societal changes. It can be expected that especially seeing oneself as responsible for ageing preparation is somewhat more pronounced in Western countries, such as the USA, Germany, or the Czech Republic. In Eastern cultures such as in Hong Kong or Taiwan, in comparison, responsibilities were expected to be more strongly attributed to the family. The subjective attribution of responsibility for ageing preparation was again measured with a graphical assessment scale using slides to indicate how one allocates responsibility for ageing preparation in various domains (cf. Fig. 4.7). In relation to each of the fve considered preparation domains, fnancial preparation, preparation for housing, preparation for need of care, preparation against loneliness, and preparation for dying and death, respondents indicated how they assigned responsibility between themselves, the society, and the family. For example, if it was assumed that oneself, society, and family were equally responsible, the "slider" in could be placed in a middle position.

**Fig. 4.7** Capturing subjective responsibility for fve domains of ageing preparation

Figure 4.8 summarizes the respective response patterns of the respondents in the fve countries under consideration, broken down by age group in the respective preparation domain. For the purpose of better comparability of the responses shown, all scale values were standardized and transformed in such a way that the average values in each case lie in the middle of the scale and the individual values scatter in the same way. The dashed line shown in the fgure indicates in each case in which value range approximately 68% of all respondents' answers lay. Figure 4.8 illustrates that there are clear differences between the countries surveyed, but also between the considered preparation domains.

In Germany, responsibility for almost all preparation domains was more often attributed to society (in relation to the self and the family) than in all other countries. Only in the preparation domains of dying and death and social participation in old age did many German respondents see responsibility as lying with themselves or, in a balanced way, also with the family. In contrast, respondents in the USA saw responsibility for preparation for old age in all domains mostly with themselves. In the two Chinese countries Hong Kong and Taiwan, the response patterns are similar and show a clear differentiation depending on the considered preparation domain. In Hong Kong, responsibility for the fnancial situation and for housing tends to be attributed to the family, while responsibility for social participation and for dying and death tends to be attributed to society. However, there were also some domainspecifc differences between the countries. For example, Germany and the Czech Republic saw greater social responsibility in fnancial preparation for old age than the USA and China. Regarding the age groups considered, there were only relatively small and inconsistent age differences in all the examined countries.

It is apparent that older participants generally tended to lean toward the middle in their answers and were in favor of a balanced responsibility between society, family, and self. The fndings of the online study show that the examined countries differ signifcantly in terms of the responsibility of society, the family, and the individuals themselves for preparation for old age depending on the different domains. Future evaluations of our project will also allow us to clarify the extent to which the differences between the countries also have a concrete impact on preparation for old age and preparatory behavior.

**From your point of view, who is responsible for the preparation\*?**

Note: 2018 survey; shown in T values with 95% confdence intervals around the mean (solid line). The dashed lines indicate the range of values of half a standard deviation (±5). Young 18–44 years, middle-aged 45–64 years, older >65 years

#### **4.3.6 Desire for Longevity as a Motive for Ageing Preparation**

Future and preparatory action relates to a late phase of life that not all people reach and which, moreover, appears to many people to be less desirable. Accordingly, the question of the desired duration of one's own life could represent an important drive in preparing for a long life. Especially concerning how long one would like to live, attitudes and expectations differ quite signifcantly between people, also depending on the respective living conditions and life domains (Lang et al., 2007; Lang & Rupprecht, 2020).

Thus, many people regard the length of their own lives as mainly dependent on biomedical advances, due to which possible diseases can be increasingly better combated, delayed, or even prevented altogether. A view frequently associated with this is that a prolonged long life seems desirable only as long as it remains free of chronic and serious illnesses. Living longer if this is accompanied by dependence on medical care, nursing care, and care by others appears, by implication, as a daunting scenario to be avoided. One possible consequence is that preparatory action is primarily devoted to maintaining one's own health, functional capacity, and self-determination.

To some people, it seems desirable to live a long or even prolonged life even if this should be accompanied by functional limitations, with losses and care needs (Cicirelli, 2011). In our project, we assessed the desired and expected duration of one's own life with the help of two questions. First, we asked, "How old would you like to be?" and, subsequently, "How old do you expect to be?" The resulting difference between the desired minus the expected lifespan thereby denotes the *subjective life expectancy discrepancy* (Rupprecht & Lang, 2020). This now provides information on the extent to which one's own presumed life expectancy appears in principle to be rather too short or too long (Table 4.2). This also has various implications for how a long or extended life is assessed and how people prepare for old age (Lang & Rupprecht, 2019a).

In all countries, younger adults were more likely than older adults to report wanting to live somewhat longer than they expected. This subjective life expectancy discrepancy was particularly pronounced in Germany and the Czech Republic and signifcantly greater among young adults in the USA than in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In Chinese countries, for the clear majority of respondents (i.e., more than 50%), the ideal life span exactly matched the subjective expected life span. In Western countries such as the USA, the Czech Republic, and Germany, a clear majority of respondents wished to live longer than they subjectively expected to live. In all countries, there was a small proportion of people between 5% and 20% who even wished to live less long than they expected.

When people are asked how long they would like to live, a common and frequent response was to express reservations and uncertainty about how to answer to this question. Such uncertainty in one's response to a possible desired longevity was shown to also entail information about preferences, mindsets, and attitudes that people have toward living long and extended lives (Ekerdt et al., 2017; Lang, 2023;

**Table 4.2** Desired life span and subjective life expectancy discrepancy

Note: Young = 18–44 years, Middle age = 45–64 years, Older = 65 years and older

Lang & Rupprecht, 2019b). In order to capture these reservations about their own desired lifespan, respondents were asked whether they would also want to live as long as they would like if they were seriously ill or in need of care. Only 12% answered this question in the affrmative. Around half (52%) of all participants said their answer was uncertain, as they were not sure what they wanted in this regard. Expressed uncertainty was strongest in Eastern cultures as compared to Western cultures (see far-most right column of Table 4.2). While the majority of respondents in the USA, Taiwan, and Hong Kong did not answer the question with certainty, a majority of German and Czech respondents were quite sure of their own lifespan wishes. In all countries, only a small proportion of respondents (7–23% depending on age) were convinced that they would want to live as long as they did, even if this meant being seriously ill and in need of care.

In sum, it can be seen that in all cultures, a rather cautious, reserved idea of what it means to live a long life prevails among most people, and a majority of people in the Western countries wish to live a few years longer than they expect for themselves, subject to health reservations, while in the Eastern countries, such wishes were expressed much less frequently.

#### **4.4 Conclusion and Outlook: The Flexibility of Ageing**

The fndings on ageing preparation of the project *Ageing as Future* show that there is a high willingness among adults of different ages to deal with the subjectively expected topics and challenges of ageing and to take action to prepare for the last phase of life in an anticipatory and preventive way. All in all, this shows that the various domains of preparation for old age gain urgency and importance in the course of adulthood, especially for many older people. However, with regard to the fndings of the online studies, the question arises to what extent the fndings can be generalized. At the beginning of the project, for example, the participants in the online study were often female and more educated than in the questionnaire study. However, these differences increasingly evened out in the course of the project. Nevertheless, it remains to be clarifed to what extent differences in education and income have an impact on preparatory and future action.

Most people adapt their preparatory behaviors fexibly to the requirements of the respective cultural conditions and, depending on culture and context, differentiate between the various domains of preparation, for example, between fnancial preparation, preparation for the need for long-term care, and preparation for dying and death. This differentiation of life domains is also evident regarding views of the future and with regard to specifc beneft and cost expectations in one's own preparation for old age.

Overall, the fndings suggest that younger adults are less likely than older people to engage in ageing preparation in all domains. Younger people generally see fewer benefts and also fewer risks in preparing for old age, and they usually believe that they have more time in their lives to prepare for most domains than older people do. However, there are also domains, such as fnances or care, where many younger adults see a need to start preparing for old age early in life early in life. The fndings indicate that most people specifcally adjust their ageing preparation to the concretely anticipated requirements of various life contexts and situations in their own future.

Ageing preparation affects all areas of life in old age in a differentiated way. Thus, adults distinguish clearly between the necessities and challenges associated with the phase of life immediately after the end of working life and those that at a very late phase of life, when the particular vulnerability of old age is at stake. For example, the substantial age- and culture-related differences in personal timing for ageing preparation indicate, for example, that preparation for old age is ftted quite fexibly into one's life course, depending on the respective social and cultural conditions.

The overall picture shows that individual ageing preparation action are fexibly adapted to one's own respective life circumstances and the respective welfare state conditions and thereby also refect these. This is also partly refected in the normative deadlines that people perceive for their preparatory actions, which vary according to life situation and cultural context. In all the considered domains of preparation for old age, differentiations are apparent not only according to age and culture, but also according to individual differences. Particularly in the personal handling of one's own fnitude and limited lifetime, strong individual differences become apparent, which are ultimately also refected in domain-specifc preparations for the end of life.

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# **5 Time Structures of Ageing: Acting Old Age Between Everyday Abundance of Time and Biographical Time Poverty**

Stephan Lessenich

#### **5.1 Sociological Perspectives on Old Age and Ageing**

#### **5.1.1 The Sociality of Old Age**

Age is a social phenomenon. At frst, one might think the opposite: Doesn't every person lead their own lives and just get older? Is not the life course, as the long path of ageing towards death, the prototypical example of the individuality of human existence? From a sociological perspective, the appropriate answer—formulated as briefy as possible—must be: No. No: What we individually experience as our "own" life is in many ways a product of social conditions and social relations. And no: Even if we tend to reconstruct our biography as an autobiography (and some of us also write it down or even publish it), the course of our life is by no means in our—or even God's—hands alone, but to a very substantial extent in the hands of partly quite abstract, partly very concrete social powers.

As banal as this statement may seem, it is at the same time fundamental and farreaching: Ageing takes place in society. Some sociologists would go even further and say that "age" is a social construction. And if one does not go so far as to claim in an obviously contradictory way that age "does not exist," then there is a lot of arguments for this view. For already the chronological age—a category that seems natural to us—is a social convention: At some point, people agreed to measure the lifespan of a human being in years and to understand and describe the biological continuation of life as a process of "ageing." The fact that the author of this article was "55" at the time it was written or identifes himself as "born in 1965" must be understood as a thoroughly social fact: As a 55-year-old, he may personally feel "young" (or at least "young at heart"), but socially he will no longer be counted among "the young,"

S. Lessenich (\*)

Institut für Sozialforschung, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
though not yet among "the old" either, because his age will always be evaluated by his social environment in relation to the average life expectancy of German men and this is (as we all know even without knowing the current fgures of the Federal Statistical Offce) somewhere in the 80s. As the author was born in 1965, he is—as he has experienced himself and as others do know—part of the *baby boomer generation*, a member of a numerically large virtual group (*age cohort*) of people born at a certain historical time, who since then, without knowing each other, have in a certain way gone through life together and have shaped and formed the social world of the present in a kind of cooperation that no one really acknowledges.

What may appear to every one of us as highly special and individual—namely, our "own" life course—turns out from a sociological perspective to be an equally highly collective, social event: The life course is "institutionalized" (Kohli, 1985), i.e., set up in such a way that all members of society ultimately follow the same life path, ordered and controlled by social institutions. School, work, and old-age security are the institutions that mark different phases of life and at the same time frame them as differentiated age stages: Childhood or adolescence, adulthood, and retirement. Provided with very different social attributions (e.g., "curiosity," "routine," "experience"), only the last phase of such a three-part life course is regarded as "the age" in the generally shared understanding—i.e., shared by "young," "adults," and "old" alike. However—another genuinely social phenomenon—this latter attribution has tended to shift in recent times, from the "third age" (Laslett, 1987) of retirement to the "fourth age" (Higgs & Gilleard, 2015) of those in need of care and suffering from age dementia. The fact that "age" is, thus, externalized and attributed as a marker to the 'very old' others points to the socially prevailing negative construction of old age—but more on that in a moment.

#### **5.1.2 The Relationality of Old Age**

Every age determination is necessarily relational. A personal age statement does not have individual and social signifcance as an absolute value, but only in relation to other ages. "At 17, one still has dreams" means that these are youth-related and may already have been lost by the members of not too distant age groups ("Don't trust anyone over 30"); "life begins at 66" is the feel-good motto of all those who are "not among the youngest," but who, with the beginning of retirement age, enjoy a "late freedom" (Rosenmayr, 1983), which in turn is no longer granted to the "really" old.

Different ages thus "live" in the strong sense of the word from their respective differentiation from others. The practice of social comparison, otherwise known from the feld of income distribution and the squinting at higher earners or looking down on those who are worse off, plays no less important role regarding age. Within the generations, as well as between them, people relate to one another in everyday practice: For example, one has "held up quite well" in comparison to other, supposedly less ft older people, and "the young folks" of the following generations are said to be less hardworking, critical, well educated, etc. than one's own age cohort once was. And, most importantly: "Old" are always only the others - the neighbor who, unlike oneself, hardly ever leaves the apartment anymore, or the friend who "at his age" should rather not drive a car any longer.

Behind the talk of the relationality of age, however, there is more than the practices of demarcation from age peers or (at least perceived) elder people, which have a socializing effect in their own way. More signifcant for the life situations and life chances of older people are the intergenerational power relations in a society, which are characterized by the hegemony of the "middle" age. The age group of 25- to 55-year-olds, who can claim the status of the working and family-forming "core" of society, has a norm-setting power that should not be underestimated: It is here that decisions are made as to what is economically productive, socially valuable, and culturally legitimate. Older adults must measure themselves against the rules and values of these "middle-aged" groups, and they must answer to "them" (van Dyk & Lessenich, 2009a). Contrary to what striking formulas such as those about "pensioner democracy" suggest, the "society of long life" (Stöckl et al., 2016), in which more people tend to be in the post-employment stage of life, is by no means dominated by the retirees. However, the apparently widespread concern that this is or might be the case says a lot about the prevailing social image of old age.

#### **5.1.3 The Negativity of Old Age**

The negativity of the prevailing notions of old age—at least in public discourse—is quite remarkable, especially considering that longevity is becoming more widespread in rich Western societies, and thus the social phenomenon of very old age is also becoming increasingly "normal" (Lessenich, 2014). Perhaps, however, it is precisely here that the key to understanding the social devaluation of old age lies: For somehow everyone wants to grow old—but no one wants to *be* old. Obviously, contemporary society is dominated by an extremely ambivalent relationship to ageing, that is, to a biological process that is ultimately inevitably associated with losses of physical and mental capacity. It is, however, not only the relative certainty of psychophysical restrictions that must be accepted if one wants to live for a long time. Maybe more importantly, one has to face precisely the devaluation of one's social position in old age, of which one already knows in advance as a person who has been ageing for decades—and to which we, quite paradoxically, often contribute ourselves in our younger years.

Against this backdrop, a countermovement has been underway for some time in the academic feld, but also in politics and the media, which is attempting with great institutional and discursive effort to counter the structural dominance of a negative image of old age with its systematic revaluation (Denninger et al., 2014). However, this well-meaning promotion of positive ideas about life in old age has its own problems, as it links the recognition of old age to the image of old people who are healthy and mobile, active, and productive—i.e., with reference to qualities that are commonly associated with younger people or that in public discourse are considered attributes of youthfulness. Such a positive connotation of "young old-age" (van Dyk & Lessenich, 2009b) not only threatens to shift negative images of old age to the higher and highest ages. It rather, if only unwittingly, fuels the "othering" of old age (van Dyk, 2020), by socially constructing the dependent and even more so the demented old age as the other of a desirable life, indeed almost as non-life. However, the "scandal of ageing" (cf. Améry, 2020) cannot be eliminated in this way: Neither

the personal humiliation that the ageing process is often experienced as nor the associated resistance and disdain with which old age and older adults tend to be treated.

#### **5.1.4 The Heterogeneity of Old Age**

That there is neither "the" old age nor "the" old person as such, i.e., that neither all old people are the same nor their individual experiences of old age are identical, sounds like a scientifc truism—which is, however, strangely enough consistently ignored in the public negotiations about this phase of life and this population group. What one would never claim of people in middle adulthood, i.e., of 35- or 45-yearolds, namely, that they exhibit characteristic features shared by all members of their group, is commonplace with reference to old people: From the bent old man with a cane to the "friendly old lady," or recently alternatively the sporty-young grandma and the grandfather engaged in grandchildren's care, stereotypical images and associations determine the phase of old age like no other. Although children are also assigned standardizing attributions (eager to learn, ready to discover, carefree), these are still counteracted in social practice by parents' individualizing exaggeration of the special qualities and qualifcations of their offspring.

The homogenization of old age, instead, remains largely socially uncontested, regardless of whether negative or positive stereotypes are mobilized to describe this life stage—think of the "popular disease of dementia" on the one hand, the "potentials of old age" on the other.1 During the COVID-19 pandemic, this almost obsessive tendency for collective categorization was confrmed once again, as "the elderly" were immediately and refexively identifed as a particularly vulnerable group (Lessenich, 2020; Graefe et al., 2020, Kim-Knauss et al., 2022). Yet, of course, old and oldest-old age are no less diverse than any other age; on the contrary, they tend to be even more diverse, because the biographical accumulation dynamics of social inequalities (in education and occupation, income and wealth, nutrition and health) lead to very different social situations of older people (Simonson & Vogel, 2019). By no means, then, are all retirees (or even female retirees) "well off," and by the same token, not all old people are "frail." What the "Corona crisis" showed once again is the fact that health risks are by no means only a question of age, but at least as much a matter of class.2

<sup>1</sup>Remarkably, both formulas are not only disseminated by virtually all actors in the feld of ageing policy—from welfare NGOs and medical associations to expert bodies—but often both at the same time.

<sup>2</sup>The likelihood of severe disease progression in the pandemic was lower among healthy older adults than among pre-diseased younger people—and the incidence of supposed "diseases of civilization" such as obesity or diabetes, in turn, is typically much higher in poorer households than in richer ones.

#### **5.1.5 Old Age and Ageing as Process and Practice**

Thus, "old age" is manifold—and it is a process. Even the everyday statement that one is x years old corresponds to a snapshot in the process of ageing, which again is to a certain extent cancelled out in the respective age statement: In one's 56th year of life, for example, one already has 55 lived years "on the hump," which becomes visible not only in its potential curvature or in other physical changes but also in the form of the accumulated experience from decades of lifetime—and thus from the passage of the different phases of one's own biography, as well as from the experienced history of society. Someone who "is" 55 today, like the author was at the time of writing this piece, was only a year younger a short time ago and will soon be a year older again, has passed through various stages of life and repeatedly changed age groups and will continue to do so until his death. "Age" is thus a process category, in terms of individual as well as collective biographies (Crosnoe & Elder Jr, 2002; Moen & Hernandez, 2009). It is multiform in time and across time. Any sociology of old age, therefore, must always be a sociology of ageing.

Moreover, from a sociological perspective, age is—and with this, I would like to conclude the introductory framing of our research fndings to be presented in the following —a practice category. Age is lived, not only in the sense of "doing age," i.e., of a permanent everyday production of "age-typical" ways of acting and "ageappropriate" social behavior. Beyond that, age and ageing are fundamental categories of human existence and coexistence: They have a thoroughly material, biophysical foundation; they are embedded and incorporated into the reproduction of social contexts; and they are lived, practiced and enacted, that is, acted out and performed in the process of social life (cf. e.g., Twigg, 2004). In this respect, a sociology of old age and ageing deals with the social phenomenon of old-age lives or of "living old age." In order to connote this praxis dimension of old age, we will follow Nina Degele (2008) in using the linguistically more manageable and, for our context of investigation, more suitable term of acting old age.3

#### **5.2 The Research Question**

The research interest of the qualitative study (or studies) of the *Ageing as Future* project focused on the time management of older people as a specifc dimension of ageing. The starting point of our investigations was the question of the relationship between everyday time wealth and biographical time poverty in old age, or more

<sup>3</sup>On the understanding of the term ("Altershandeln" in German), see Degele (2008: 165): "Societal institutions, everyday knowledge and practices create templates, regulations and norms for normal old-age and ageing, and conversely, ageing also creates societal structures and norms. The intersections are the actors and the actresses who *do* this. This is what I call 'acting old age': positioning oneself vis-à-vis mental, physical, and psychological perceptions, sensations, and experiences of one's own body in terms of one's advancing life time, as well as vis-à-vis related structural conditions (e.g., retirement age) and media representations (e.g., 'golden agers' or 'generation silver')." (Emphasis in original).

precisely: Whether older people who are no longer in employment perceive a tension between increasing "free" time in everyday life and decreasing remaining lifetime—and how they deal with this tension. In short, we asked for the time management practices of older and very old adults.

The background to this empirical question was the initially theoretical consideration that people who are no longer employed are confronted with two different time logics that tend to contradict each other. On the one hand, with the onset of the post-employment phase, the available everyday time increases. In a certain sense, people as pensioners are entering the realm of leisure: Not only does the corset of the professional organization of work fall away, but it is not uncommon for the demands of family time organization to decrease, so the days are (or seem) now open to one's own free disposal. On the other hand, the transition to "retirement" also brings the limitedness of the life span and the unavoidable fact of one's own death into the experience and expectation horizon of older adults: For them, life's "last chapter" opens, which could explain why among people who are said to have "all the time in the world" the saying "pensioners never have time" circulates.

In this context, we were not only interested in whether the older people we interviewed state or construct this tension for themselves, but above all in which factors—individual and structural, situation-specifc, and socio-historical—are the ones that infuence the dealing with the different time logics of old age and thus determine the empirically found constellation of everyday and lifetime agency in old age. Which roles do time and time agency play for the self-description of older people as "old"? Is the relation between already past and still remaining lifetime decisive here—or the feeling of being able to dispose of one's own everyday time (or the experience that this is no longer possible)? What constitutes the experience of having the power of time disposal in old age, on which factors does it depend? Who has not only a large amount of time at his or her disposal, but can actually (i.e., effectively) dispose of it—and why? In what way and under what conditions do older people develop time management competencies, and how does the resulting feeling of sovereignty over one's own time contribute to subjectively keeping the fact of old age at a distance and projecting it into a distant future? How do older people's time management and time interpretation practices change in the transition to old age, e.g., under conditions of their own impending need for care or when they assume responsibility for the care of relatives, maybe for their own partner?

In answering these questions, we expected to fnd—as sociologists, and the open-qualitative approach to the subject matter notwithstanding—not only identifable gender differences but also effects of social class (according to income, education, and origin). The intercultural comparative design of the project was also intended to capture "cultural effects" on the practice of "acting old age"—in the sense, for example, of the social signifcance of experiences of autonomy or of social norms in dealing with death—which would tend to remain hidden in an investigation restricted to only one single cultural context. Finally, we were also interested in specifc age and cohort effects, which is why we interviewed both younger (60- to 75-year-old) and older (75- to 85-year-old) adults and, in some cases, repeated interviews with previously interviewed persons. In the second funding

phase, we concentrated on recruiting old and very old interviewees to be able to examine in more detail old-age agency with regard to the end of life.

The following presentation of the empirical fndings is, of course, not primarily structured in line with our initial questions nor exclusively according to our original epistemological interests, but, following the logic of qualitative social research, sticks to the narratives, relevance orders, and meaning attributions of the older people we interviewed.

#### **5.3 The State of Research**

Before coming to this, however, the state of scientifc research on questions of time management in old age should be reported in the shortest possible form, with research by members of the *Ageing as Future* project network itself being particularly relevant in this respect.

The guiding principle for our qualitative research focusing on the time management of older people was the—actually unsurprising—insight gained during previous studies that time and temporality are central dimensions and infuencing factors of old-age agency. In practically all social milieus, across different spheres of life, and well into older age (not yet in need of care), empirical evidence initially reveals a relatively ageless self-image among respondents (Graefe et al., 2011): Their selfconcept is not dominated by the experience of transitioning into a new stage of life called "old age," but rather by a perceived continuity of adult life that makes them "older adults" in their self-description ("adults who are older," Harper, 2004: 3). For this self-concept as "ageless selves" (Kaufman, 1986), in the sense of subjectively not having completed yet the entry into the status of the "old," the negativity of the socially prevailing views on ageing (see above) plays a crucial role. However, of essential importance for the subjectively perceived and claimed "agelessness," in a positive respect, is the experience of "time sovereignty" that accompanies the transition to "post-employment life" (Geissler, 2008): The biographically new feeling for many older people of mastering their own time and time management (Münch, 2014). Age-related changes and losses are "offset," so to speak, against the time autonomy gained in old age; the "late freedom" already cited above, especially in matters of time, proves to be an important pillar of an ageless self-image.

However, the question of everyday time management in old age has not yet been researched thoroughly from a sociological and qualitative perspective; it is quantitative studies on time use that dominate the literature (for Germany, e.g., Tokarski, 1989; Opaschowski, 1998, Engstler et al., 2004; internationally, e.g., Gauthier & Smeeding, 2003; for the following, see also Münch, 2021: 97ff.). These studies provide an insight into the diversity and frequency of activities in everyday retirement, basically revealing little that is spectacular: Media consumption, social (especially family) contacts, hobbies, and physical reproduction are identifed as the main activities of older people. The most important qualitative study on the topic in the German context (Burzan, 2002), which distinguishes everyday patterns of time management according to their degree of structuration and relates them to the

relative biographical importance of different areas of life, now dates back two decades. A second relevant, hardly more recent study (Köller, 2006) emphasizes the importance of the employment biography for the time structuring of older people as well as, mediated by this, for their subjective perception of the everyday "fow of time."

Even older, but of direct relevance for our interest in the question of time management in old age, is the research of the working group headed by Martin Kohli (cf. e.g., Kohli et al., 1989), which examined, at the historical high point of the West German early retirement regime , early retirees' perceptions of time and future. Here, again, the central explanatory dimension is the employment biography of early retirees (Kohli et al., 1983), which in turn is closely related to their sociostructural position as employees and to the dispositions resulting from the respective position (cf. Wolf, 1988; cf. also Graefe & Lessenich, 2012). Thus, status-mobile employees (at that time consistently meaning those with experiences of upward mobility) conceive of time as a resource that enables them to tap into new opportunities for action in their post-employment lives. Early retirees socialized in stable, middle-class positions and oriented toward maintaining their employment status see time as a task of actively shaping a successful old age, whereas for rather lowskilled employees with experiences of occupational precariousness, time in the transition to retirement is seen more as the promise of experiencing a stability that is new to them.

The concomitant dimension of the subjective perception of everyday time, its inertia or speed, deceleration, or acceleration, is the analytical link also to the practical meaning of lifetime (cf. Brose et al., 1993, for a sociological defnition of the two concepts). The perspective of a shrinking lifetime budget that emerges with increasing age and the resulting lifeworld distance from the employment system (Thomae, 1989; Weiss & Lang, 2012) is usually not a question of an abrupt, crisisridden insight into the fnitude of life, but rather a gradual process of the imperceptible restructuring of time perspectives and the emergence of a more present-oriented lifestyle. This increasing "presentism" in the time management of older adults is likely to be a source of the compression of everyday time often perceived in old age. Despite the actual abundancy of time, somehow a feeling of time shortage emerges in everyday life, constituting one of the limits of the "ageless" self-image discussed above.

Another boundary of the perceived non-membership to the group of the "old," which is at least as important in social practice, lies in one's own need for care. The anticipated loss of independence and self-determination subjectively associated with the care situation represents for many older people the "actual" transition into old age or into the "fourth," fnal stage of ageing. As our own previous research has shown, the negative views on ageing, especially of a demented old age supposedly reduced to mere physicality, are of a remarkably abysmal nature. In the social imaginary of ageing, the onset of the need for care represents the end not only of the ability to shape everyday life, but the end of life itself, and not infrequently even the epitome of a life that is not worth living, an "abjected life" (cf. van Dyk, 2020: 140ff.).

#### **5.4 An Outline of the Findings**

#### **5.4.1 Everyday Time Management**

One of the many generalizing attributions to "the" old refers to their assumed "time prosperity" (Rinderspacher, 2002). At frst glance, things seem to be clear: Those who retire at 65 or even a few years earlier have a phase of life ahead of them in which there is no shortage of time, or more precisely, of a daily available "free time." Obviously, the fact that there is an objective gain in time that is not consumed otherwise, especially not in the form of gainful employment, cannot be dismissed. However, it has to be taken into account that not everyone was employed in his or her later adulthood and thus not everyone made the classic transition from work to retirement. For women in particular, at least the abrupt change from full-time employment to mandatory retirement was and still is by no means a completely normal experience of old age—either because they were no longer gainfully employed after the birth of their children or because they only worked part-time after raising them. In addition, the gender-specifc nature of post-employment life is not only evident in time-use studies but also in our interviews: For many women, the time-consuming family and household obligations continue unabated after their partner's retirement or even with their own retirement, the everyday division of household labor remaining unequal. The much-used image of "late freedom" is thus frst and foremost a profoundly male stereotype or rather a stereotype geared to the life experiences and everyday practices of older men.

Even this fnding, however, cannot simply be left as it is, but must in turn be qualifed. The fact that the "corset" of time commitments disappears or at least becomes much less tight in the retirement phase of life, which in most of the cases is spent in partnership, is a frequent image used by men and women alike to describe the subjective experience of time in old age. This indicates that the phenomenon of a perceived "time wealth" is not only about the purely quantitative dimension of an absolute expansion of the time budget in old age but at least as much—and even more importantly—about the perception of a decreasing external determination, a reduced access of third parties to one's own time resources. For most people, the decisive factor for subjective time prosperity in old age is the biographically new experience of being able to literally manage the available time budget, to have it at one's disposal. The core of the matter is self-determination of "time use": In this sense, old age is, it seems, the ultimate time of managing time.

As is always the case in the social world, however, the abundance of time understood and qualifed in this way is an ambivalent matter, because connected to the possibility there is always the necessity of time agency. No matter whether men or women, whether previously employed, non-employed, or unemployed: Basically, they all face the age-specifc or, more precisely, the life phase-specifc challenge of restoring or reconstructing "everyday life" after retirement (cf. Wolf, 1988). Be it yourself or your partner who "loses their job" practically overnight, it is important for all older people to actively shape their everyday lives after having left employment. No matter how they do this (and that is what our interviews were about): the restructuring of everyday life and more specifcally the temporal reorganization of everyday practice are "the" tasks of life par excellence in old age (cf. Ekerdt & Koss, 2016).

The qualitative research conducted within the framework of the project *Ageing as Future* confrmed the fndings from our own earlier studies insofar as older people themselves almost universally name 'having time' as an important and positive characteristic of their life situation. This is summed up in, given the societal conditions, an almost emblematic way by an interviewee who describes time as "my capital" and himself as a "capitalist in time." Beyond all possible experiences of loss in the process of ageing, our interviewees consistently put the bulging time budget on the credit side of old age. Not every old person, however, claims the role of "capitalist" in the narrower sense, reporting that they use their time as a means of investment with corresponding expectations of return. Rather, the "investing" strategy is only one of the three age-specifc everyday time styles that we have identifed and that are confrmed in our empirical material.4

Investing, enjoying, or flling time: These are three distinct, empirically widespread *patterns of everyday time management* in old age, each of which has its own connection to the structural patterns of lifetime agency of our respondents. The "investing" mode is characterized by a subjective orientation not only towards a personal advantage, but at least as much towards a social beneft of time use in old age. Everyday time is managed in the sense that it is devoted to meaningful activities—as a voluntary commitment not only to oneself and one's own well-being but also to that of the social surrounding. The time management mode of "enjoyment," on the other hand, explicitly does not follow any logic of the meaningfulness or usefulness of one's own actions: instead, time is considered a consumer good rather than an investment object. The "release" from the constraints of working life is taken at its word, and, in special appreciation of the everyday time gained, "having time" and "taking time" (above all for oneself) are given great importance in practical action. Finally, "flling time" means looking for activities and occupations that make the day go by. The activities documented by our interviewees in this regard tend to have a passive character, because they do not so much refect one's own interests, nor do they follow immediate external constraints, but they rather aim to retighten the lost "corset" of everyday life. Each new day appears here as a task to be mastered; each day one has "killed the clock" creates a certain feeling of relief.

Not only for this latter time practice, but for it in particular, the establishment of routines of everyday life in old age is important (cf. Ekerdt & Koss, 2016). For many older people, routines have an important ordering and stabilizing function: being able to practically shimmy from agenda item to agenda item in everyday life gives a sense of being located and secure in time—and thus also in the world. At the same time, the reference to such routines, not only in the interview but also in everyday communication with relatives, friends, and acquaintances, has a signifcant

<sup>4</sup>Cf. in detail Münch (2014), who, however, speaks of a model of retirement-specifc "time sovereignty" and, in this context, of "strategies" of time agency in old age—both conceptualizations will be problematized below in the light of our more recent research.

function of suggesting competence: Here, so the story to be told goes, is an older person who literally "pulls their life off" and about whom one accordingly does not need to worry. This applies not least to the self-assessment of older people: everyday routines that provide support for a way of life no longer held together by gainful employment produce a thoroughly effective fction of mastery in the sense of having one's own life "under control."

It is certainly not only older people who need such a handrail to support them on their way through everyday life—but people with more "free time" need it more than people who are very busy. Nevertheless, the importance of routines is by no means the same for all older people. Rather, their signifcance, like the three aforementioned everyday time styles themselves, depends strongly on the employmentrelated biographical experiences of older people and, mediated by this, on their respective socioeconomic status. From a sociological perspective, this is a main fnding of our research: the practical everyday management of "abundance of time" in old age—and thus also "time abundance" itself—is socially unequal. It is people's life histories and life situations that convert 'time abundance' in old age into an asset (or not).

In this sense, our qualitative empirical research shows that the importance of routines for the management of life in old age tends to decrease, or at least to be relativized, with higher occupational and income status. Those who in old age are practically oriented toward flling their time, or even to "kill" it, usually look back on an employment history in which there was little room for maneuver for an independent organization of everyday working life; typically, even the termination of employment in these cases was determined externally and rather involuntary, not least in anticipation of a comparatively low old-age pension. In contrast, the transition to retirement is framed positively by our interviewees belonging to the group of "time affcionados," not least because it was largely self-determined and connected with the prospect of a good or even very good pension that opens suffcient options for action. Against the backdrop of the time pressure experienced in their employment life, members of this group are almost exuberant about the time gained through retirement and seek to use it to the fullest for themselves and their families. The "investing time" type, in turn, is associated with an early, but nevertheless voluntary, exit from gainful employment—for example, due to a perceived breaking point which in a sense clears the way for an already existing interest in social engagement. However, the fact that one must be able to afford, also in concrete economic terms, being socially engaged is well-known from research on voluntary work, and the orientation of our respondents toward highly active, socially useful activity in old age was consistently based on a secure household income.

Ultimately, all three patterns of acting old age are characterized by socialstructural, occupational biographical effects, starting with the seemingly most trivial aspect of the time of daily getting up: Those who have had to get out of bed very early all their lives are still "attached" to this habit even after the end of compulsory employment—unless they take the small liberty of ignoring the alarm clock and simply turning in bed once again, which is tied to having enjoyed a certain degree of self-determination of working hours throughout the employment biography.

Such biographically predetermined autonomy in individual time action tends to continue over the day, week, and year. Depending on whether the transition from work to retirement was perceived more as a gain in freedom or rather as a deprivation of security, the personal way of dealing with the experience of an unusually underdetermined, largely unbound everyday time is more or less "sovereign." Social inequalities in old age are thus reproduced in two ways: In biographical perspective, high levels of agency are extended from the middle phase of life into old age; in socio-structural terms, gains in autonomy in old age tend to occur in social milieus that are used to enjoy a greater capacity for self-determination.

In addition to the three aforementioned patterns of everyday time management in the narrower sense, we were also able to identify three—actually four—*variants of social time orientation* among older people in our empirical material. In the background of this partial result was the question with whom older people spend their daily time, i.e., who are the partners of their "free time" organization. Interestingly, this focus of our qualitative research was a result of the intercultural comparative design of the project, because the particularities of social life in old age at the different national locations did not come to the attention of the local researchers in the frst place. Rather, it was the colleagues from the other countries, who were not equally familiar with the culturally anchored features of life outside their own home countries, who noticed the unusual (for them) characteristics of the social organization of time in old age that was common and self-evident elsewhere (cf. Lessenich et al., 2018).

Our fndings in this regard follow the considerations of Gergen and Gergen (2003), who distinguish three relevant social dimensions of life in old age, namely, the relationship(s) of older people to themselves, to other persons, and to the social community. Accordingly, in our empirical material—and expressed in our terminology—individualistic, interpersonal, and communal social orientations of time management can be found, with the interpersonal orientation being further differentiated into a familialistic and an age group-specifc one. As with the previously discussed time styles, the patterns mentioned hardly ever occur in pure form in reality: The concrete practice of social time organization in everyday life is always a specifc mixture of different orientations. And yet, beyond the individual cases and their particularities, certain widespread prioritizations can be identifed. Thus, in addition to strongly individualistic, ego-centered ways of using time, which are subjectively often justifed by the desire to be able to "fnally do something for oneself" after the end of the working and/or family phase of life, there are also systematically strongly communal, community-oriented time practices, in which the most diverse forms of social engagement for more or less distant others form the essential content of everyday life.

A third type of social time orientation in old age is of an interpersonal nature, which in turn takes two forms. Either everyday life is shared primarily with one's partner or with members of one's own family (classically, the grandchildren) and/or relatives. This familialistic orientation is to be distinguished from the one in which time is spent mainly with people from one's own age group or peer group, i.e., with one's closest circle of friends, an age-homogeneous group of leisure partners, or in institutional contexts, e.g., senior education. The intercultural comparison of social time orientations revealed interesting differences in the subjective attribution of meaning to one and the same time use practice. For example, while communal time orientation seemed completely self-evident and downright "not worth mentioning" in the North American context, corresponding orientations tended to be emphasized and normatively highlighted by German respondents—in line with the offensive political promotion of volunteer work in this country, especially in old age (cf. Neumann, 2016). In Hong Kong, on the other hand, a practice of actively socializing mainly with other older people seemed to be "normal" and not in need of further explanation, while this very practice was not infrequently accompanied by expressions of regret by German respondents that they could not (any longer) fnd access to younger leisure partners.

Underlying all this diversity of individual everyday life experiences, be it in social or organizational terms, there is a social requirement that is ultimately common to all older people: the subjectively perceived need to justify one's own mode of everyday time practices. To a certain extent, such a need for legitimation exists after early childhood—in every phase of life and for every age group. In older age, however, this is to a greater extent the case, precisely because of the "abundance of time" given in the self-perception as well as in the perception by others. For many older people, in part even for those who are confessedly in "enjoyment" mode, this *subjectively perceived compulsion to justify themselves* takes the form of a disposition that is imbued with the "ethos of being busy" (cf. Ekerdt, 1986). This "busy ethic" represents, functionally, a solution to a problem that is signifcant both individually and socially, the problem of establishing continuity between employment and retirement life, a continuity at least in the sense of the symbolic continuation of the normative references for one's agency. Although retirees as such are freed from the demands and constraints of gainful employment, they still orient their lifestyles on the norms and values of working life (cf. Ekerdt & Koss, 2016). In this sense, activity ("busyness") is good, passivity ('laziness') is bad, and a regular daily routine is highly appreciated even in old age, while letting oneself go is subjectively strictly forbidden. The retirement life of many older people is thus characterized by a logic of "as if"—as if they were still gainfully employed. Accordingly, in retirement the day must be "flled" in some other way than by way of employment, and "investment" activities, especially so-called hetero-productive activities (i.e., activities that beneft other people), sometimes take on a quasi-full time job character in terms of their scope. And even the "enjoyment" of time is not only measured against earlier, work-related deprivations, but also derives its value—in the sense of the interpretation as an extended, even endless "vacation"—from conformity with the norms and normalcies of working life.

All these fndings ultimately point to the diffculty, or even inadmissibility, of speaking of "time sovereignty" in old age. If at all, the possibility of a truly sovereign, i.e., unrestricted, everyday time activity that is neither impaired by material or social nor by institutional or normative factors is reserved only for very specifc, quite singular social situations. In the true sense of the word, hardly anyone in this society is sovereign over his or her time, in old age as well as in other phases of life;

the "mastery" of one's own time, the individual establishment and maintenance of an autonomous time regime, requires extremely extensive time resources coupled with exceptionally well-developed time competencies. The generally false suggestion associated with the talk of "time sovereignty," but just as well of "time prosperity," that older people are masters in the house of their own everyday life, should defnitely be avoided in the light of our research. The existence of "free time" must be legitimized even in old age, notwithstanding the public discourse formula of "deserved retirement"; subjectively, there is no feeling of de-responsibilization in old age, at least not in the sense of a moral relief from justifcation constraints. Against this background, it seems equally inappropriate to describe the practical ways in which older people deal with the "problem" of free time as individual "strategies." The notion of planned, goal-oriented, calculative action suggested by this term does not do justice to the real existing practices of everyday time activities of older people and their subjective interpretations. For freedom in old age is, according to our qualitative interviews, only in a socially limited way the individual freedom to act differently: "one is free but not free to do nothing" (Ekerdt & Koss, 2016: 1297).

#### **5.4.2 Lifetime Management**

As seen, the everyday time management in old age is, on the one hand, in a way nothing special, but a refection of conditions that basically affect all socialized individuals: Like everyone else, older people must organize their lives and structure their everyday time. Just as anybody else, they must justify the existence of "free time" to themselves and, above all, to others in a society permeated by the logic and ethics of work; for them, too, the possibilities of truly "free" disposal of their own time are limited, and among them, too, the scope for everyday action is unequally distributed, depending on the resources available.

And yet, on the other hand, it is true that the everyday time activities of older people certainly have their special moments and motives, which are due to the specifc location of higher, "advanced" age in older people's individual life courses. In contrast to younger people, older people have a comparatively long stretch of things that happened "before": a past life that, although it may have taken place in very different ways, is in any case eventful and saturated with experiences, the imprints of which inevitably shape the old age life of 60-, 70- or 80-year-olds. Everyday time management in old age can thus, basically, only be understood as a practice infuenced by the life already lived. And as such, according to the fndings of our qualitative research, it is not uninfuenced by the concrete, life-time-related perceptions and orientations of the old. How everyday time is shaped in old age thus depends not least on how older people conceive of their own lifetime, both in retrospect of their life history and in outlook on the future, i.e., on what they still expect in and from their lives.

In this sense, we were able to empirically identify two clearly distinct, and in some ways contrasting, *life-time styles* in old age. These two ways in which older adults use to deal with their subjectively remaining life time are to be understood as typical or typifable combinations of biographical retrospection and prospection, both of which are of immediate importance for the organization of everyday life time. We have characterized them as the "logic of catching up" on the one hand and a "life in limbo" on the other (Münch, 2016)—two modes which, however, certainly do not exhaustively describe the spectrum of possibilities of individual life-time management.

The logic of catching up is found among older people who look back biographically on a structural lack of time and on years, often decades, of putting aside their own interests. In our interviews, it is especially women or mothers who express the life experience of never having had time for themselves between the multiple demands of raising children, household chores, and their own gainful employment (Beck-Gernsheim, 1983). The time of old age then appears to these respondents as an opportunity to fnally be able to do all the things they always wanted to do but never got around to before—or at least to tackle some of the unfnished business. "So, then I just felt I had a whole lot of catching up to do": this is the typical paraphrase of this life-time style, which translates in everyday terms into a multitude (sometimes a subjectively perceived excess) of activities, from fulflling long-held desires such as learning languages or a musical instrument to traveling on one's own and cultivating old, neglected friendships. As a rule, this self-chosen (hyper)activity, in the light of which not young and middle adulthood (Panova et al., 2017) but paradoxically the so-called retirement phase turns out to be the "rush hour of life," is related to a perceived biographical scarcity of time: "It's now or never" is the watchword—because who knows how long one has still to live. Or even more, the urgency to catch up sometimes seems imperative, because, for example, the early death of a parent or the statistical life expectancy are perceived as quasi-objective limits of one's own biographical time budget. The latent time pressure associated with the life-time logic of catching up is summarized by one of our interviewees who, refecting everyday communication with his acquaintances of the same age, expresses the following appeal: "Remember, you probably still have about 7,000 days to live."

The life-time style that tends to oppose this activist concept of old age, and which we conceive of as a biographical limbo between life and death, is characterized by the fact that older people permanently pause in anticipation of their demise and begin to withdraw from social relationships, thus entering, as it were, a passive state of waiting. Regarding the perception of time and everyday activities, this disposition leads to a pronounced presentism: nothing major is tackled, nothing new is started, and longer-term planning is ruled out. Life is spent in the here and now. In this sense, our project partners in Hong Kong and the USA speak of "time freeze" (Ho et al., 2019), i.e., a downright halting of time, in which the future is subjectively not so much shortened but conceptualized as a mere extension of the present. The old-age agency of respondents who can be assigned to this life-time style takes place in the mode of suspension: the rhythm of life is scaled back, and everyday life is reduced to a minimum. The background of such an orientation toward inaction is often formed by critical life events: a survived heart attack, the death of close people, especially of the life partner. In all these cases, the end of one's own life comes closer; potentially imminent death comes into view: "I could drop dead at any moment." From this perspective, restraint in all situations and concerns of life then appears as a form of precaution, because in the event of death, one is neither torn out of something important oneself nor does one cause others to experience loss if one has already said goodbye to everything and everyone beforehand. The subjective entanglement of lifetime orientation and everyday practice is also evident in this case: Expecting death at any time, life becomes a waiting room in which time passes but is effectively halted. And in which inconspicuousness is the frst civic duty: the feeling of one of our interviewees of being "only temporarily present" led him to simulate his absence, to make himself downright invisible. In this sense, he began to practice activities that were once taken for granted and highly valued, namely, driving, less frequently, more carefully, and almost secretly—in other words, in such a way that no one would notice him. The fact that the value idea of "autonomy in old age" is taken literally—as "auto-nomy"—in Germany, especially by men, and is thus associated with the continued use of one's own car, is an interesting fnding of our qualitative studies, especially in an international comparison, which cannot be further elaborated here.

In one case as in the other, in the active catching up with what has been missed as well as in the passive pausing before death, it should have become clear that "individual life-time styles" are never only individual and never only related to lifetime. Life-time styles always have recognizable effects on the organization of everyday life or on corresponding patterns of everyday time management (see above). And they can never be understood without taking into account the concrete life management patterns of signifcant others: older women in the mode of catching up, for example, act against the experiential background of a family life in which they have systematically put aside their own desires in favor of their husbands and children; older men in a self-chosen state of limbo, on the other hand, seek to take into account the supposed or actual life plans of their children or younger partners. Thus, one of our very old interviewees, upon reaching his 90th birthday, decides to literally suspend his social life, because his own life expectancy and the time horizons of his preferred interaction partners increasingly diverge in his perception: "They cannot just take care of me. I'm only available for a short time, and the younger ones will live longer, so they must live on with the others."

"I am only available for a short time": This age-related attitude to life, which becomes more and more prevalent with increasing age, can obviously function as a motive for very different ways of organizing everyday life, i.e., more active, or more passive ways. Similar subjective perceptions of time can thus, in other words, result in a very different sense of *well-being in terms of time*. Based on our empirical research, we prefer the category of *time well-being* to the established sociological talk of "time wealth" and "time prosperity" on the one hand, and "time autonomy" and "time sovereignty" on the other. We prefer this category to "time sovereignty" (see above) because, according to our fndings, it is not the perceived quantity of available time that is decisive for the subjective quality of life in old age—and because real autonomy in the disposal of time turns out to be a strongly milieubound attitude toward life that tends to be reserved for older people who are better off in terms of resources. In contrast, time well-being—as the individual well-being *in and with time—*is a complex constellation of perceptions, which is fed by a multitude of sources and is neither equivalent to objective time wealth nor to individualistically conceived control practices. Well-being in time in old age is both a subjective and a social category in which factors such as personal resource endowment, health status, spatial mobility, involvement in social relationships and responsibilities, critical life events, chronological age, and the prevailing social time regime intersect and intertwine. In all its complexity and inner contradictions, it cannot be reduced to a single denominator and ultimately can only be explored in intensive qualitative interviews with older people—as socialized individuals themselves.

In this context, and against this background, an important problematization of the concept of "retirement," which we believe is overdue, must be undertaken—as well as a second order problematization, in the sense of a problematization of the common forms of its problematization. Originating as a political category, rooted in the National Socialist semantics of the "quitting time of life," and becoming a sociopolitically institutionalized fgure with the Federal German pension reform of 1957, the concept of retirement ("Ruhestand") has since become frmly established in German everyday language. In the world of social discourse, it has in fact become synonymous with the post-employment phase, indeed with the life phase of old age per se (Denninger et al., 2014; Göckenjan, 2000). The double problem of the conceptual politics revolving around this term lies in the fact that, on the one hand, the social conceptions of old age as a specifc phase of life are shaped in a pejorative and exclusionary sense. Old age understood as retirement signals that people, once they have become "old," move into a state of rest: Into a status position in which they have their peace and, consequently, are let alone—but in which they also are in rest, in which they are supposed to just let the others, not or not yet old, be as far as possible. Old age as retirement describes a social siding established by the welfare state, on which the material appreciation of the life old people lived goes hand in hand with the symbolic devaluation of their life still to be lived: Here, rest in this world has already been provided for, in the expectation of the old eventually fnding "eternal rest" in the hereafter. Mind you, and as already indicated: this retreat of those who have been deprived of their duties in the working world to their now socially guaranteed old age was for a long time, and in part still is today, a real option at best for the elder males. For many women, especially for those who have been working only temporarily, intermittently, or marginally, the idea of retirement was and is nothing more than this: an idea, an institutional fction, and more so in view of the gender-specifc division of labor that is perpetuated even among older couples.

No less problematic than the symbolic (and in part also material) devaluation of the "evening of life" as a time of retirement, however, is the countervailing tendency to problematize a "retiree lifestyle" that has become prominent in recent times (van Dyk et al., 2013; Hasmanová Marhánkova, 2011). Under the discursive umbrella of an "activation" of old age, the image of retirement has come to serve as the epitome of a historically outdated mode of existence to be socially overcome. To the extent that, in the face of demographic change, the idea of a public collective provision for old age is discussed as a fnancial hangover, older adults themselves become a social burden that society can no longer afford (or may no longer want to afford). To solve the problem thus constructed, the delegitimization of retirement as a lifestyle is being resorted to more and more frequently—whereby the question as to what extent the social situations incriminated are existent at all or not rather fctitious is hardly ever raised in the public debate. Either way, older people are called upon not to lean back, but to keep the ball rolling. The "potentials of old age" is being discovered at every turn (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2008) and political efforts are being made to mobilize the resources of older people. A socially (if not economically) productive way of life, for instance, through practices of civic engagement, is becoming synonymous with "successful" ageing, not only in the political discourse on ageing but also—and even earlier—in gerontological discourse (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Schroeter, 2004). Those who rest in old age, on the other hand, not only rust slowly, according to the new scientifc-political image of old age, but also, intentionally or unintentionally, throw sand into the gears of economic and social dynamics—in a certain sense, this could be seen as an old-age activity, albeit one that is obviously unwelcome in the "ageing society."

While retirement as a social construction of the last phase of life is increasingly being discredited in public discourses about ageing, the idea of just taking it easy in old age is still frmly anchored in the life plans of older people themselves, as earlier fndings from our qualitative research indicate (Denninger et al., 2014; cf. also the concept of the "tranquil life" of our Taiwanese colleagues, Liou, 2016). However, this image of successful ageing, like the subjective future images of quality of life in old age in general, is subject to a major caveat shared by virtually all the individuals interviewed in our subproject: you must be or stay healthy. "As long as I am healthy and can do everything myself, that's okay": This statement by a 90+ years old pensioner could have been made in this or a similar way by almost all our interviewees. According to our fndings, older people rarely have an absolute, unrestricted desire to live as long as possible. The ideal of longevity is rather often a qualifed one, which as such is mostly closely tied to health criteria by the interviewees—and indeed in all countries included in the study (Ekerdt et al., 2017; Lang & Rupprecht, 2019a). In principle, people want to become "ancient," maybe even join the illustrious circle of centenarians—but not unconditionally, only if and as long as body and mind cooperate. This "health fxation" of ageing ideals is complemented in the Western ageing cultures we have studied by an analogous autonomy focus of life plans: According to this, good old age (and ageing) takes place in autonomy. Dependence on third parties, although an unavoidable social normality for every person and at every age, is a horrifying image for many people in the fnal phase of life and one that consistently provokes strong defensive reactions (Ekerdt et al., 2023). The dependent old age—optionally translated as sick, bedridden, in need of support or care, and increasingly also demented—is to be avoided at all costs; it is the unwanted, rejected other of a successful life towards the end. "Better dead than seemingly dead": This basic attitude devaluing the "fourth age" (Higgs & Gilleard, 2015) has been encountered again and again in the European-North

American research context, moderated at best by religiously based motives of uncomplaining indulgence or explicit acceptance of an uninfuenceable fate of life.

The widespread fear of loss of control, in the sense of an ultimately externally determined way of life in old or very old age, represents the background for a last fnding of our qualitative research to be documented here. This refers to the—as is the case with so many things in old age—very individual way in which ageing people deal with the knowledge of the fnitude of their existence in everyday life . Under the formula of *doing fnitude,* which tries to capture linguistically that fnitude does not remain an abstract body of knowledge in the process of ageing, but rather becomes a "practical idea" that is actively processed as such, we have specifcally investigated older people's *acting of fnitude*. In doing so, we have unearthed two central insights. First, we can identify a continuum of agency that runs between the poles of openness and control: While some older adults take the end of life and its concrete form as it comes ("Because it's guaranteed to turn out differently than I imagine. So I don't have to worry about it at all."), others, conversely, devote a lot of energy to shaping it themselves. A cornerstone case in this latter sense in the German sample was a 79-year-old man (at the time of the interview) who, as a precaution, tried to take the circumstances of his death into his own hands as far as possible: He drew up a living will, became a member of an association for selfdetermined dying, dealt with the possibilities of old-age suicide that came into question for him personally, and rounded off his plans for Day X by purchasing an emergency cell phone that he programmed to send a call in the event of his suicide, thus ruling out the possibility of an undiscovered death. This interviewee fnds inner peace, and with it the willingness to go on living, only in his intensive preparations for the end of life—in the feeling of having done "everything that one thinks one can do at all."

Of course, there are also less strictly fnality-related practices that nevertheless address the fact of the fnitude of life—the life-time style of catching up on what was missed in the "previous life" described above could be mentioned in this sense, but also, for example, the early "down-sizing" of living space and material possessions (Ekerdt, 2020). The latter form of ageing is particularly interesting insofar as it forms a bridge between practices of fnitude that operate more in self-reference and those that take place more having others in mind. For example, moving out of a house that has become too big and into a smaller apartment or into an assisted living facility on one's own decision, and in the process necessarily getting rid of a good part of the household goods that have sometimes accumulated over decades, can be understood as a form of self-determined preparation for old age, which at the same time also aims at relieving other people, typically one's own children, from the obligation of a later household liquidation. Such forms of future-oriented action, which focus not only on one's own life but also—and perhaps signifcantly—on the lives of (signifcant) others, were encountered repeatedly in our interviews. In their most pronounced variant, they are completely absorbed in the reference to others, and one's own life takes a back seat, whereas the life of the following generation(s) becomes the epitome of ageing as future. Generativity as a process of giving meaning to one's life that points to the future (Erikson, 1959) becomes, as it were, a solution to the problem of fnitude: "Children and grandchildren, that is the future. That's the idea, that goes on, even if it doesn't go on for me, but there is something going on. Basically, a part of me goes on, too".

#### **5.5 Conclusion: The Ambivalences of Old Age and Ageing**

One thing above all needs to be noted as a result of our research-based observations: the process of ageing or, if you will, the *process state* of old age is, from the perspective and in the experience of older—and further ageing—people themselves, a thoroughly ambiguous, indeed ambivalent phenomenon. "Old age" is a constellation of life that is lived—and must be lived—individually, but that at the same time is always socially structured. As we hope to have made clear, everyday time and lifetime are deeply socially shaped in their complex interplay, so that even though no one can be relieved of living his or her own life, it can undoubtedly be said that there are no "individual" everyday and life-time styles in old age in a strict sense. It is true that single, partner and family households, and especially households with and without care obligations, differ strongly regarding the forms of indirect and direct social dependence that exist for the respective household members. But ultimately, they all —we all—lead "linked lives" in a variety of ways and at every stage of life (Moen & Hernandez, 2009).

The specifc feature of old age in the sense of post-employment life is that it is a comparatively undetermined or at least underdetermined phase of life in institutional terms. Against this background, a good part of the life practice of older people refers to the existential concern to make the unavailability of lifetime available via everyday time practices. The knowledge about life's fnitude is of major social relevance for the individual shaping of life, irrespectively of the more or less successful practices of repressing death itself. But not only the management of the fnitude of life is given to all ageing people as a task of old age. The double coding of old age in the sense of its relief and its devaluation is also, in one way or another, part of older people's experience. "[A]ll retirees face the same two challenges of retirement: to manage its threat of marginality and to utilize its promise of freedom" (Weiss, 2005: 14)—but it is by no means the case that all older people would or even could make the same out of it. It would therefore be necessary to really take seriously the invocation of the "diversity of old age," a notion which all too often degenerates into a mere scientifc-political phrase.

In conclusion, however, we must be self-critical in stating that our own qualitative research was ultimately unable to meet this goal of accounting for diversity. At all research locations, our sample shows a socio-structural imbalance in favor of (upper) middle-class households—an overrepresentation that inevitably also determines the research results presented here and that to a certain extent distorts them. Future research on old age and ageing is urgently asked to avoid the practical reproduction of social inequalities that this bias implies.

**Acknowledgement** I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Anne Münch for her productive collaboration in the context of the "Ageing as Future" project. The fndings presented in this chapter and their sociological interpretation are partly indirect and partly direct results of our longstanding scientifc exchange.

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# **6 Age(ing) as Future: Future of Age(ing)**

Frieder R. Lang, Stephan Lessenich, and Klaus Rothermund

#### **6.1 Between Appreciation and Exclusion: The Paradoxical Politics of Age(ing)**

Age and ageing in contemporary society are characterized by a fundamental, profound ambivalence. On the one hand, demographic change and the resulting expected increase in the presence of older people in social life are recognized as a social trend for the future. The "long life society," in which a high life expectancy has become the norm, is seen as an achievement of civilization and a sociopolitical challenge. On the other hand, however, views and semantics of an "ageing society" continue to dominate the public discourse, with even scientifcally framed positions sometimes contributing to promote threatening demographic scenarios. Paradoxically, the very political initiatives that aim to enhance the value of old age against this background ultimately undermine their own intentions by contributing to framing old age as a social problem.

In this mixed situation, the project *Ageing as Future* started with an intention to contribute to informing the "ageing society" about itself. Its fndings, which are now available, are suitable for a different way of thinking about the presumed "problem" of age(ing): Specifcally, the problem being one that late-modern society has with

F. R. Lang (\*)

Institute of Psychogerontology, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Nürnberg, Bayern, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
S. Lessenich Institut für Sozialforschung, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
K. Rothermund

Institut für Psychologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Thüringen, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
itself—and which, to put it casually, its older adults must pay for. In the following, we will develop this argument step by step.

The socially prevailing descriptions of old age are characterized by the fact that they are exaggerated in one or the other way and lack balance. Either they tend toward an idealization of old age, which is one-sidedly associated with positive qualities such as serenity, experience, and wisdom. Traditional views of sprightly, dignifed old people then appear in idealized images of happy family gatherings, dominated by fgures such as the grandmother telling pleasant stories while doing needlework by the freplace or the grandfather who is buddy-buddy with his grandchildren and always ready to allow exceptions to the educational principles of their parents with a wink. On the other hand, however, and more often than not, a defcient image of this last phase of life, which now often lasts several decades (Lessenich, 2014), is shown. Accordingly, old age is characterized by limitations in physical and mental capacity, social networks seem to be thinning inexorably, so old people tend to be perceived as lonely people. At the same time, the fnancial burden of pension payments and care services for older people is regularly discussed, sometimes to the point that they live at the expense of younger people and would diminish the prospects of adequate provision in old age for the next generations. The past is then pitted against the future: While older people are denied their own future prospects, the social benefts and support they have acquired over the course of their lives are seen as a mortgage on the life chances of future generations.

As solutions to this supposed problem, two different paths are recommended to older people on which they can move toward the end of life—for their own good and that of the public. As contrasting as these two paths may seem at frst, the norms of "a good old age" (de Paula Couto et al., 2022a; Rothermund, 2019) that underlie each of them equally promote the social devaluation and exclusion of old age. Although both age norms, that of disengagement and that of active ageing, contain positive elements, they often become converted into their opposite in social reality. When misused, both norms can nourish the collective wishful thinking that old age and older people should remain hidden from public attention: Be it because they restrict their interactions to their own age group and to their private lives (i.e., by adhering to the disengagement norm), or because they are able to adapt so successfully to their surrounding that they are no longer noticed as older people (i.e., by adhering to the norm of active ageing).

The norm of disengagement unquestionably refects desirable aspects of old age. It is an expression of the possibility of shaping one's life in old age free from external obligations and entirely according to one's own ideas. It guarantees the freedom and the temporal resources to come to terms with the fnitude of one's own existence, to focus on the essential things in life, and to ultimately be able to "let go" and to bring one's own life story to a good ending. The norm of active ageing, on the other hand, comes with the prospect of being able to participate in society even in old age by maintaining physical ftness and mental sharpness, and by taking an active approach to everyday life. Those who stay ft also remain socially alive and will be able to enjoy retirement as a time when life is anything but tranquilized.

Thus, as much as both age norms have positive implications, or at least could have, they turn into their opposite under the given social conditions. To solve the "problems" of an ageing society, both norms are misused and perverted by the politics of ageing (Denninger et al., 2014). The norm of disengagement then becomes a norm of renunciation: Ideally, the disengaged, self-oriented older adults no longer make any claims, neither on their immediate social environment nor on the social community or on "politics." The good old age becomes private, it takes place within one's own four walls or behind the walls of institutionalized older people's homes, and it is undemanding and self-suffcient. Nevertheless, it is precisely this self-suffcient type of old age which, because of its perceived non-sociality, even a-sociality, is always in danger of being portrayed as a social burden, as a social cost factor whose unproductive lifestyle is at the expense of the rest of society. Under this framing, disengagement implies renunciation, and even with far-reaching renunciation, the remaining demands are seen as critical consumption of scarce societal resources.

The constellation is exactly the opposite regarding the norm of active ageing, which in turn may represent a threat rather than an opportunity when becoming a productivity constraint. For not every activity in old age is able to satisfy the activation norm; rather, socially benefcial behaviors that serve the common good, from volunteering to caring for grandchildren, are primarily in demand. The activation norm then becomes a norm of what is considered to be age-appropriate behavior, which obliges older people to make their contribution in the service of the community—while at the same time forces them to actively keep themselves healthy, ft, and mobile, so that they can make their contribution for as long as possible. The participation opportunity embedded in the activation norm thus turns into an obligation to participate, the practical fulfllment of which is a prerequisite for the appreciation of old age.

Old age is construed as a problem that old people can only try to deal with by either renunciation of consumption or by active contributions to societal needs, without ever being able to fully meet expectations or to not be seen as a burden. This interpretive context is rooted in a deep-seated conviction, frmly anchored in both individual and collective consciousness, that life in old age is worthless. Here lies the core of the matter: in the generally shared certainty that "real" life takes place before and ends with entering old age—and thus long before death. Anyone who is "really" old has therefore nothing more to gain from life and has also nothing more to give. At most, it can then still be a matter of at least not being a burden to others—younger people. In the end, the only thing that helps is avoiding old age, either by fghting it and adapting to younger people or by disappearing from the scene and not disturbing the lives of others any further.

This societal conviction of the worthlessness of old age acquires an ethical quality in the individual and collective treatment of old age: It justifes the unequal treatment of older people, it makes their neglect and marginalization seem logical, it even asks for these inequalities. Older people have hardly any room left for selfconfdence, because as soon as they appear in public at all, they are somehow always a nuisance: Sometimes they delay business, sometimes they give unsolicited good advice; if they do not adapt to social expectations, they are considered stubborn; if, on the other hand, they try to keep up and appear as young as possible, then they run the risk of being perceived as mortifying. Interestingly, the tendency to exclude older people by demanding inconspicuousness and modesty from them is, according to a recent study (Martin & North, 2021), particularly pronounced among people who otherwise express strong egalitarian attitudes*.* On the one hand, they are massively opposed to sexism and racism; on the other hand, they are convinced that older people should not stand in the way of the younger generation. The age category thus stands, much more than the gender or race categories, for the counter-image of a successful life, for what is socially undesirable and to be split off from one's own self—which makes unequal treatment appear not only appropriate but even a necessity according to the norm of fairness.

In this respect, it is not surprising that the widespread forms of both everyday and institutionalized discrimination against older people attract little public attention or even criticism. In essence, the numerous discriminatory practices older people face (Ayalon & Tesch-Römer, 2018; Rothermund et al., 2021b; Rothermund & Mayer, 2009) have broad social acceptance, if not explicit approval. This is particularly true of rigid age limits in working life and in the transition to retirement: In many (mostly European) countries, there is a statutory exit from the labor market that is linked to a certain chronological age (e.g., 67 years in Germany). These strict age limits are sometimes abstractly problematized as being too rigid and infexible and possibly also criticized in concrete terms when people are personally affected by it. In all other respects, however, when it comes to the old "others", the regulated generational change in the company—despite all the talk of mixed-age teams—is still considered to be functional in economic and organizational terms.

At the same time, the contradiction remains unaddressed, namely, that precisely those people who have just been (dis)qualifed as being "too old" for the frst labor market are simultaneously targeted by a state engagement policy that never tires of emphasizing the importance, indeed indispensability, of social productivity in postemployment life. Similarly paradoxical are the calls and reminders to take precautions and to prepare for one's old age that older people are confronted with in an increasingly urgent manner: What initially appears as a societal conviction that preparation for and economic security in old age is important and meaningful suddenly becomes a political expectation directed at the ageing population. It is not public institutions that are held responsible for generally shared needs for provision, instead, the individual subjects—here older people—are required to take care of themselves and their own future.

Interestingly, the social idea of the worthlessness of life in old age, which is the major source of the diverse mechanisms of age discrimination, is also internalized by older people themselves, thus contributing to the reproduction of practices that devalue and exclude old age, or subjectively prolong and thereby cement such practices. The fact that the unequal treatment experienced socially by older people is duplicated in the form of self-discrimination (Rothermund, 2018; Rothermund et al., 2021a, b; Voss et al., 2018a) does not, of course, mean that they are "themselves to blame" for their social exclusion. Rather, it points to the complexity of the foundations and to the widespread appeal of the "social imaginary" of life being worthless in old age (Higgs & Gilleard, 2021) that underlies the social phenomenon that is referred to in international scientifc as well as political debates as "ageism" and for which, quite signifcantly, there does not even exist a distinct word in some languages (e.g., in German). We will return to this point later.

#### **6.2 Of Variability and Vulnerability: There Is Nothing Like Age(ing) per se**

The manifold forms of factual devaluation of old age and everyday practical exclusion of older people culminate in recurring debates about a possible "abolition of old age": What if the biological ageing process could be slowed down, stopped, postponed? What if it were possible to "defeat" ageing by means of medical technology? What at frst seems to be a somewhat whimsical, playful continuation of classical ideas of the fountain of youth and timeless utopias of eternal life, nevertheless provides deeper insights into the tendency to not take the reality of old age and ageing seriously in our time. The imagination of a life without old age and a society without the old is ultimately only the radicalization of prevailing practices of reinterpreting old age on the one hand (e.g., in the idiom of the "young old"; van Dyk & Lessenich, 2009b), and on the other hand of its individual denial and collective repression: "Old" is then basically a designation of something that is different from regular life, and the "really" old only get to see relatives and the nursing staff. In the depth of psychosocial dealings with the unavoidable fact of ageing, we see a fatal escape from the reality principle: The old are punished for embodying the social fact of old age(ing), for holding up to us the mirror of our personal future—presented as a story of decay (Martens et al., 2005).

Yet old age and ageing are actually quite different from what is painted in the negative views that feed the bad utopia of society as an age-free zone. This is probably the most important empirical fnding of the project *Ageing as Future*: Old age is not a uniform phenomenon; it is as diverse as life itself. There is also nothing like old age "as such," because growing older is a process, a constant ageing that knows no clear boundaries and thresholds. In fact, ageing is a long quiet river that does not fow into the sea of old age at a fxed date—be it the departure of the youngest child or the death of the partner, the day of retirement, or the 80th birthday. The paths to old age, the individual courses of the rivers of ageing, so to speak, are extremely diverse; none is truly identical to the other. Even after critical life events such as a stroke or the diagnosis of a fatal illness, not all biographies are gray; even then, a wide variety of ways of dealing with the perhaps elementary experience of ageing can be observed: That things in life are suddenly no longer as they were before.

Our quantitative and qualitative fndings show a remarkable variability of age(ing) in two respects: *between* individuals and *within* individuals. The variability of age(ing) *between* individuals refers to its *social-structural* dimension. There is no less diversity of life situations, life courses, and lifestyles among older people than among younger people, that is, people in adolescence or adulthood. How and why should it be any different? Why should millions of people who grew up in very different parental homes in their younger years come from very different social milieus, have gone through very different educational paths, can look back on very different employment biographies, are integrated into very different family constellations and social networks, have very unequal fnancial opportunities, and so on: why should this diverse assortment of people, as they transition into retirement or reach a certain chronological age—whether 70, 80, 90, or 100—all of a sudden converge,

merging all at once into an amorphous mass of "old people" who exhibit uniform social characteristics and psychological dispositions? To pose the question in this way is to declare absurd the background assumption of a uniform, homogeneous phase of life called "old age." And yet, the homogenization of "old age" is common social practice: Depending on one's point of view, all older people are considered to either enjoy being home or enjoy traveling, to either be spry or decrepit, well off or threatened by poverty, stubborn or wise. Whether they are to be envied or pitied, a burden, or an opportunity, the most common thing is to make the simplest possible collective judgment about old age and the old.

Contrary to that idea, the social reality of old age in the early twenty-frst century, as it emerges in the fndings of the project *Ageing as Future,* stands in sharp contrast to such undifferentiated and one-dimensional views on ageing. Both individual and institutional, material, and cultural factors contribute to the inherently multidimensional heterogeneity of old age. Different personality traits and formative life experiences infuence the different ways in which people deal with issues such as preparing for old age or structuring their daily lives in old age. Equally, factors such as their own family circumstances, their (objective and subjective) state of health, or their endowment with fnancial resources and educational capital can be important. The rather low normative and institutional imprint of older age compared to other phases of life is also responsible for its many faces (Riley et al., 1994): After leaving the labor force, there are no longer any chronologically fxed events or tasks (such as compulsory schooling) or social transitional norms (such as moving out of the parental household at the latest when starting one's own family). Instead, older people are free to decide whether they remain as long as possible in their current living environment or, on the contrary, whether they make an early effort to switch to forms of assisted living; they may choose to live alone for decades, or they may remarry even at the highest age, possibly also with persons of their own sex.

To avoid any misconceptions: It is not the case that in old age "everything is possible," both individually and structurally (which, of course, is by no means the case even in younger years). But empirically, there is a wide variety of life design patterns and realized life plans also among older people. In turn, cultural factors are important for their range and specifc design, which could be shown in the context of our project, especially through the international comparative perspective: From the question of when a person is considered "old" to that of what meaning is ascribed to the end of life or the fnitude of life and what practical consequences this attribution of meaning has, striking differences are found not only between older people within a country but also between older people of different age cultures. These differences obtained not only between Western and East Asian societies (represented in our project by Hong Kong and Taiwan), but also between the European and the North American cultural contexts (e.g., the US-American practice of old-age employment, i.e., the absence of a mandatory retirement age policy, which seems extremely "foreign" in a German background of experience, has already been mentioned here).

Perhaps even more surprising and in contrast to the common understanding of old age as a homogeneous phenomenon is the fact that there is a high degree of

variability in age-related beliefs and experiences not only between individuals but also *within individuals,* that is, within a single person. A central research interest of our project was related to exactly this intraindividual diversity of age(ing), more precisely to its context-dependence and domain-specifcity. Our fndings impressively show exactly this: Different life domains each have their own criteria and rules of being old. In addition, each older person has different abilities and resources, options for social connections and relations in different life domains, leading to different self-evaluations in these contexts. One and the same person can, for example, experience themselves as "old" in the domain of work and occupation because they feel set back within the company or not valued in terms of their competencies and qualifcations. Simultaneously the same person may still perceive themselves as clearly "younger" in the domain of partnership and family, whether because they have entered into a new love relationship or because they are developing new life relationships as a result of the birth of grandchildren.

It is not only the subjective perception of age and ageing that varies depending on the life domain. Personal evaluations of old age and older people are also strongly dependent on which life domain the people we surveyed had in mind: If, for example, older people are seen as being in their element with regard to religious life, they are more likely to be seen as being in a defcient position with regard to their social life. These perceptions about older adults' lives or about life in old age, in turn, change across the lifetime: Younger people tend to have more negative views of old age(ing) than those for whom old age and the experience of old age are already a personal reality. In this regard different life domains are also important: In the domains of work and health, for example, with approaching old age people become more inclined to credit old age—and their own ageing—with positive attributes and to picture it in a less gloomy light. On the other hand, when it comes to family, friends, and leisure time, 50- to 60-year-olds, i.e., those who are about to but have not yet transitioned to old age, have the most negative views of old age—a seemingly paradoxical distancing from the age group to which they themselves will soon belong. Just like positive ageing experiences in a life domain that is of high personal importance can brighten the overall picture of old age or transfer to the assessment of other life domains, similar generalization effects can also occur with negative views of ageing that taint the outlook on ageing in other domains or in general. In this respect, both positive and negative spirals in the individual handling of ageing experiences are conceivable, including such dynamics during which older people "adjust" themselves in a world of objectively limited possibilities and perhaps even feel comfortable in it (Ong et al., 2009; Rothermund & Brandtstädter, 2003b; Ryff et al., 1998).

In addition to variability, however, a second meta-fnding of our empirical study needs to be reported at this point, namely, the *vulnerability of old age*. This result of the *Ageing as Future* project again has two dimensions, because the vulnerability of old age can be understood in such a way that on the one hand vulnerability *restricts* the variability just described and on the other hand—in an opposite way—*strengthens it at* the same time. This complex connection, which may seem confusing at frst, will be briefy explained in the following.

On the one hand, old age can be described as a particularly vulnerable phase of life (Kruse, 2017). Vulnerability is a defning characteristic of human life, at basically any age: As social beings, we are existentially dependent on others, on their care and concern, from the frst to the last day of our lives. No human being is truly autonomous—independent—in the conduct of their life; everyone, even the supposedly strongest, is in need of support from others, and vulnerable in that very neediness. Going beyond this fundamental vulnerability, which is constitutive of being human, however, there is indeed a specifc vulnerability at the end of life—and the commonsense concept of old age is ultimately only a cipher, technically speaking a *proxy variable,* for precisely this form of social dependence that is specifc for old age. To the extent that, with advancing age, experiences of illness and the need for care simply become statistically more probable, to the extent that the decrepitude of life announces itself on the horizon and life becomes recognizable as a long path "towards death," the vulnerability of their existence becomes a shared body of knowledge of older—"very old" —people. In this respect, and only in this sense, one can speak of a standardization of living conditions and a de-differentiation of within-person capacities and resources in old age (e.g., La Fleur et al., 2018): What older people objectively share with each other is their increasingly scarce remaining lifetime, their relative proximity to death.

On the other hand, however, there are also variable states of vulnerability among older people, even among the oldest of the old. Apart from the general truth that is valid for people of all ages that every day lived brings us one step closer to death (which, although general, leads to social exclusion tendencies only with regard to the "really" old), it must be noted that by no means every older person is vulnerable to the same degree. This holds already for fundamental facts as their subjective remaining life expectancy, on which older people of the same age differ massively, and even more so regarding their desired longevity (de Paula Couto et al., 2023; Lang & Rupprecht, 2019a; Rupprecht & Lang, 2020). Not all older people want to maximize their lifespan, and by no means all of them think they will reach a certain age, such as living to see their 80th birthday. Statistically, too, not every very old person is subject to the same objective risk of having to face fundamental limitations to their quality of life, with different lived biographies being associated with massively different prospects. Even more importantly, the possibilities and abilities to deal with such limitations—should they actually occur—in a satisfactory way, are certainly not equally distributed. Thus, although it is true that all people are vulnerable in old age, their vulnerabilities are not the same. Instead, age-related vulnerability and coping with vulnerability depend on material resources and social networks, on biographical experiences and on personal ego strength.

The future actions of older and ageing people are shaped by this constellation of ultimately differentiated vulnerability: With the increasingly concrete life experience of vulnerability, the subjective urgency to make provisions for the contingencies of old age in the form of insurance and living wills also increases. However, the age at which this sense of urgency sets in, whether at 70 or already at 40, and how it then translates into practical action, depends on the circumstances of each individual case (Lang & Rupprecht, 2021). The vulnerability of old age is thus not the destroyer of all inequalities; on the contrary, it only sets the shared framework within which the social diversity of ageing emerges.

#### **6.3 Appreciating Age(ing): But How?**

Old age and ageing, as it should have become clear by now, is an ambivalent experience—for the ageing people themselves as well as for a society that is confronted with the collective reality of a long and constantly lengthening life but does not quite know how to deal with it. The world of ageing is no less ambiguous for ageing research, that is, for those who observe the individual as well as the societal ageing process from a scientifc perspective, which itself is never completely free of normative judgments. As such a "biased" science committed to its research object, gerontology, and ageing research face a dilemma that is hardly manageable: In principle, these sciences would like to avoid the age category and its often negative social connotations, without, however, preaching the abovementioned doctrine that "age can be abolished".

In the light of the unavoidable fact that the demarcation of a certain phase of life—the phase of "old age"—from other phases of life also leads to an exclusion, at least categorically, and thus possibly unintentionally paves the way for processes of social exclusion, ageing researchers age might be inclined to dispense with the category of age altogether. However, as much as this is a contradiction in terms and would not be an appropriate scientifc or socio-political solution to the aforementioned problem, ageing research will continue to be in danger of contributing to the "segregation" of age.

However, it is precisely the societally special status of old age that should be avoided in the future*,* according to the common conclusion drawn from our interdisciplinary research on *Ageing as Future,* which has been conducted for more than a decade. For every social assignment of a special status, no matter how well-meaning the intention, tends to backfre like a boomerang on the group that is provided with this demarcation feature: The most recent experiences with the construction of older people as a "risk group," whose increased vulnerability to the coronavirus has been used to justify their isolation in nursing homes and thus their social exclusion, can be taken as evidence of this connection (Ayalon et al., 2021). However, instead of standardizing "the older people" in large groups and characterizing them as "special"—whether in need of protection, in want of productivity, or worthy of worship—it would be time to understand and negotiate "old age" simply as what it basically is: just another phase of life. Nothing else (and "different"), as self-evident as the previous stages of life, and as the possibly still following ones.

Collectively and matter-of-factly accepting the social reality of a long life, and thus of an individually prolonged old-age life, would be the key to the personal recognition of old age as an independent phase of life, as a period of life of its own right and quality. Both sides of the experience of old age, the individual and the collective, the personal as well as the social, are closely intertwined: The actors and institutions of old-age policy are called upon to take into account the variability and vulnerability of old age outlined here, so that not only a few privileged older people, and also not only a majority of older people, but actually all older people are empowered to recognize and realize old age as a period of life that promises a meaningful present and future, and is experienced as a source of personal life satisfaction.

Only if older people have the chance to participate in and thus become part of societal reality and only if they can choose from a set of different possibilities and opportunities will it be possible to structurally improve the quality of life of older people. These outcomes are commonly understood as resulting from purely individual competencies and qualities but should instead consistently be framed as social and societal problems. This requires a radical shift in perspective: The willingness and ability to accept the reality of ageing and to recognize old age as opening unique possibilities for new experiences would fnally no longer be solely considered as challenges for ageing individuals, but would be discussed as what they are, namely, as public issues (Mills, 2016).

The "society of long lives" will only do justice to this designation if it is understood by all as a new social constellation in which it is not only statistically "normal" to enjoy a longer life, but in which there is, as a matter of course, a "right to be old"—or, formulated more generally, the equal right in any phase of life to be allowed to be as one is, including "being old," in case of doubt.

This, in turn, would mean breaking the reproduction cycle of extremely negative views of old age (mostly projected onto the highest, "fourth" age, Higgs & Gilleard, 2015, 2021) and countering the extreme biologism of the debate on old age, which is expressed in mottoes like "health is the most important thing" or even "without health everything is nothing." In this sense, gerontology and ageing research should also critically examine its own implicit normative assumptions and should break away from its widespread orientation towards questions of health promotion, medicalization, and activation—in particular its fxation on the functionality of age and the instrumentality of the old (Kocks & Unkhoff, 2021). Much would be gained in terms of age-related policy if at least scientifc interest were directed primarily toward those topics that are of real importance for older people and their life satisfaction in old age: That is, on questions of material resources and social integration, social participation, and recognition.1

Regarding the social categories of gender and race, the political-social struggle over such issues of recognition is commonplace today. Sexism and racism, #metoo and #blacklivesmatter are now—and rightly so—receiving a great deal of public attention. For the time being, however, this does not apply to age and its recognition defcits: #themtoo or #oldlivesmatter are unknown as hashtags. *Ageism* is not only generally uncommon as a political concept designating a relevant societal problem;

<sup>1</sup> In this sense, too, we would like to express our gratitude to the Volkswagen Foundation: Its generous and long-term project funding was the prerequisite for research that differs signifcantly from the psycho- and socio-gerontological mainstream.

in German-speaking countries, there is not even a word for this phenomenon. Introducing the topic of ageism into the social debate would be an invaluable advance for age(ing) policy, but also in the longer term for improving the living conditions of older people. Should the present book be able to contribute, even modestly, to this progress, it would have served its purpose.

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# **Appendices**

#### **Appendix A: Overview of Scales, Variables, and Interview Guides**

#### **A1 Central Variables and Scales of the Questionnaire Study (Table A1)**

*Note*: a T1: 2009 (D), T2: 2014 (D, USA, HK), T3: 2019 (D, USA, HK, TW, CZ)

#### **A2 Central Variables and Contents of the Online Survey (Table A2)**

**Table A2** Overview of central variables collected in the online survey (if no reference is given, the scales were developed for the present study)

*Note*: a T0+T1: 2009+2012, T2: 2014 (D, USA, HK), T3+T4: 2016+2018 (D, USA, HK, TW, CZ)

#### **A3 Structure and Content of Interview Guides (Table A3)**

**Table A3** Summary of the interview guidelines of the qualitative subproject

#### **Table A3** (continued)

#### **Appendix B: Sample Descriptions**

#### **B1 Participants of the Questionnaire Study (Table B1)**

**Table B1** Sample sizes, demographic information, and proportion of longitudinal participants in the questionnaire study at the three measurement time points in the participating countries

#### **Table B1** (continued)