| Participation-Span (Part 1 of 2)

| Odile Robotti

| A recent book and articles have gotten a lot of attention for accusing older generations of hoarding disproportionate wealth and holding on to positions of power for too long. One could almost conclude that the greatest contribution older adults can make to society is simply to get out of the way.

I’d argue, instead, that seniors need to be more involved in society and that we should start thinking seriously about what that participation could look like in later years.

We’ve devoted enormous effort to extending lifespan and healthspan. What kind of longevity society we wish to build has remained almost an afterthought. I think this is the next question we need to address.

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Rethinking the relationship between longer lives and society

Retirement, a term I use loosely since not everyone’s path into the senior years runs through a paying job, is still mostly portrayed as a time for leisure, for working through bucket lists, followed by a progressive withdrawal. While this is a perfectly legitimate course, and may be the best direction for some people, I contend that it shouldn’t be considered the default option. 

Our collective imagination has reduced older adults to two archetypes: envied owners of wealth and coveted consumers; or invisible citizens blamed for straining the welfare state.  Expectations and narratives tend to create their own reality, and they’ve changed very little, leaving seniors relegated to the margins of society despite the fact that this phase of life may now span decades. Yes, we’ve seen a shift toward a more active retirement lifestyle, but it makes little difference whether seniors go on a cruise or an adventure trail, play golf or pickleball. Activity is not the same as active participation in the life of society, because participation has effects beyond the individual.

Could this change if, besides measuring lifespan and healthspan, we started measuring how long people participate?

Introducing Participation-Span

I call Participation-Span the number of years in which individuals remain engaged in at least one form of activity that connects them to the wider society and supports its functioning. Such activities include paid work, volunteering, community service, civic engagement, and learning new capabilities that keep them adaptable and contributive.

I don’t count simple socialization (e.g., a card game with friends or a day at the country club) as participation, despite the social connections and individual benefits it may provide, because it doesn’t shape or contribute to society. This doesn’t mean Participation-Span is intended to replace concepts such as wellbeing, social connectedness, or healthy ageing. Rather, it complements them by focusing on a different, and largely overlooked, dimension of longevity: the relationship between longer lives and the vitality of society itself.

Family caregiving — to be sure, one of society’s most essential functions — occupies a gray area from the point of view of societal participation. It may in some cases be deeply isolating, disconnecting caregivers from work, community life, and other forms of participation, and its benefits often stay confined rather than extending into the wider community. The opposite can also be true: some caregivers form or join caregiver networks and support communities, creating connections, sharing practitioner knowledge that others can draw on, and providing mutual support. The design challenge, then, is to make the second path the norm, helping caregivers remain participants in society while providing care.

Why measure the span

Participation has been measured before (e.g., the percentage of seniors volunteering or working) but it hasn’t yet been conceptualized as a temporal span comparable to lifespan or healthspan. That’s an essential step if we want to turn it into something that can be monitored, sustained, and extended over time, the way we do for the duration of life and its healthy years.

Although the goal is to never interrupt participation in society, exactly as we’d like people to always be in good health, participation isn’t necessarily continuous: it can evolve, pause, and resume across the life course. The challenge isn’t to prevent every interruption, but to ensure interruptions don’t become off-ramps leading to permanent exclusions.

Participation-Span isn’t the length of a single unbroken run of activity: it’s the arc of someone’s engagement to the point, if any, where they stop for good. Within that arc, participation can dip and rebound, the same way healthspan can include a period of illness followed by full recovery.

A society with a long Participation-Span is one where people are invited and helped to stay engaged as long as they wish and can always find their way back into the shared life of society.

What Participation-Span is — and isn’t

Participation-Span is a way of thinking about how longer lives remain connected to the life of society, and the intent behind it shouldn’t be misunderstood.

It’s not a productivity measure. It’s not about extracting value from older people: there’s no implicit request to be productive, to contribute, or even to give back. Rather, it’s about making the opportunity to play meaningful roles in society, and in the lives of others, an easy and desirable choice.

Substantial research points to the benefits of participation in society. McKinsey Health Institute (Age is just a number: How older adults view healthy aging, 2023) finds correlations between overall health and participation in work, volunteering, education, and community activities. The same research points to untapped potential: fewer than 60 percent of respondents in high-income economies report engaging in any form of societal participation. You might assume this is a choice, but the more telling finding is that up to 44 percent of older adults who aren’t currently engaging say they’d like to. Even accounting for social desirability bias, this points to a significant opportunity to expand participation in ways that benefit older adults while strengthening society as a whole.

It’s not an alternative to socialization. Both socialization and participation — which, of course, may overlap — enrich people’s lives, foster wellbeing, and contribute to healthy ageing. Measuring Participation-Span, and not just socialization, allows us to shift the focus from the benefits relationships bring to the individual toward the reciprocal relationship between individuals and society. In doing so, it highlights a dimension of longevity essential not only to how we live longer, but to how we continue to shape, and be shaped by, the communities we belong to.

Read part 2

Odile Robotti is founder of Learning Edge, a management training company; author & speaker on the social and organizational impacts of longevity and on retirement reinvention.