Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 50, Issue 4 S229-S239, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America
Race, gender, and the relevance of productive activity for elders' affect
BR McIntosh and NL Danigelis
Center for the Study of Aging, School of Business Administration, University of Vermont, USA.
The influences of both paid and unpaid productive activity outside the home
on positive and negative affect among White and Black males and females
were examined in this study. Data are from a weighted subsample of those 60
and over from Wave 1 (1986) of the Americans' Changing Lives Panel Study.
Multivariate analyses confirm the basic thesis that race and gender are
critical social contexts when considering the relationship between
productive activity and positive and negative affect. Major findings are:
(a) paid work has no direct influence on either positive or negative affect
for any of the four race/gender subgroups; (b) formal religious
participation decreases the negative affect of older Black women; (c)
formal nonreligious participation increases the positive affect of White
men and decreases the negative affect of Black men; (d) informal
volunteering increases positive affect and decreases negative affect among
older Black men and White women. Discussion focuses on the importance of
role distinctions by race in explaining the various productive
activity/affect associations.
