ACTIVE AGEING: VOLUNTARY WORK (2014)

‘Active ageing’ has become a key phrase in discourses about challenges and remedies for demographic ageing and the enrolment of older adults into voluntary work is an important dimension of it. The pattern and factors conditioning volunteering among older people has so far been an under-researched topic in Europe and this is the first book to study volunteering among older people comparatively and comprehensively.

In this topical book older people’s volunteering is studied in eight European countries at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people’s inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy.

This book provides important new insights for academics and students interested in ageing societies, active ageing and voluntary work. It will also be of great value for policy makers and practitioners in third sector and voluntary organisations.

Per H. Jensen is Professor of Social Policy and Director of Centre for Comparative Welfare Studies. He has published widely in fields of comparative welfare state analysis, formal and informal work, elder care, comparative labour market analysis, early exit/retirement, and sociology of family and gender relations.

Giovanni Lamura is a social gerontologist at INRCA (Italian National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing). He was visiting fellow in 2006-07 at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany); and research director of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna (Austria) in 2010-11.

Andrea Principi is a sociologist and a researcher at the National Institute of Health & Science on Ageing (INRCA), Ancona, Italy. His main research interests relate to active ageing and he has participated in several European projects connected with the topic.