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Age Integration

Conceptual and Historical Background

^a National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
^b Consulting Sociologist, Chevy Chase, Maryland

Correspondence: Matilda White Riley, ScD, National Institutes of Health, Scientist Emeritus, National Institute on Aging, Gateway Bldg 2C227, 7201 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD 20892.

Age integration has many faces, involving complex issues related to the absence of structural age barriers and the interactions among persons of different ages. This complexity is illustrated in the introduction by Peter Uhlenberg and in the varied essays in this working paper. Underlying the complexity, however, is a common conceptual development, to which past research has contributed and on which future research can build. Understanding this commonality is basic to the central questions raised in this working paper: Are tendencies toward age integration currently increasing? And, if so, what are possible consequences for the future?

These questions were already familiar in the 1970s, when we were alerted to pressures for structural change by the steadily increasing numbers of people in the older age strata, coincident with the many baby boomers in the younger age strata. Today, these pressures are strengthened by still further dramatic additions to the oldest strata, as studies now predict that increasingly the oldest old may survive to age 100 or more (e.g., Vaupel and Jeune 1994). Faced with this prospect, we expect a growing number of older people to resist age constraints on paid work and ageist biases against active participation in the society. Pressures to relax age barriers may also come from other strata. Very young people may want earlier and earlier access to "adult" roles in work, family, and entertainment. Pressures may come also from middle-aged people, who are caught between seniority-graded work requirements and the age-related demands of kin and household. Peter Uhlenberg has discussed the potentials of studying these pressures in a range of settings: households, neighborhoods, work, education, politics, and health care.

Are such pressures the forerunners of age integration? Have they been serving to reduce the lag of social structures behind the skyrocketing numbers of competent people of every age (Riley, Kahn, and Foner 1994)? And what of the future, as the lag now sometimes tends in the opposite direction, with people lagging behind structural change? Will an emerging age integration help people to catch up with the global metamorphoses in communication, trade, and conflict? Powerful discussions of these questions are presented in the following essays, discussions aimed to stimulate awareness of age integration throughout the world.

As background for these essays, we shall review three aspects of age integration as potential contributions to its common understanding: (1) continuing conceptual development, (2) the relevance of past research, and (3) some implications for the future.

	Conceptualization

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Ideal Types of Structures
The developing conceptualization of age integration, as now widely accepted, has been aided by the two "ideal types" of social structure schematized in Fig. 1 (Riley, M. W., Foner, & Riley, J. W., 1999; Riley, M. W., & Riley, J. W., 1994). For contrast, at the left of the figure are "age-differentiated structures," those which are divided by age into the familiar "three boxes" of education for the young, work and family responsibilities for the middle-aged, and leisure in retirement for the old. The "age-integrated structures" of special concern, at the right, are those in which the age boundaries have been removed or made flexible. While these are "ideal types" in the Weberian sense that they never exist in reality, tendencies toward both types occur in all societies, but to markedly differing degrees. In the recent past, tendencies toward age-graded structures had in fact approximated the age differentiated model: they had been so widespread as to be largely taken for granted as "normal." Today, by contrast, numerous tendencies toward age integration can be detected in educational institutions, work organizations, families, and other structures.

View larger version (30K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Ideal types of social structures.

1. Breaking down structural age barriers (as role opportunities in work, education, and other structures are more and more open to people of every age); and
   
2. Bringing together people who differ in age (e.g., lifelong education could mean that old and young are students together).
   

However, widespread experience in using the concept of age integration over the years now points to the need for a fuller specification of both components. Clearly, if not yet explicitly, A and B are quite distinct components of structures, and each has associated implications for the lives of individuals. Thus, a fuller formulation of age integration would be:

Components of Age-Integrated Structures

A. Flexible age criteria

For individuals—"flexible lives"

B. Age heterogeneity

For individuals—"cross-age interaction"

Component A (breaking down age barriers) has long been widely familiar:

• For particular structures, "flexible age criteria" means that entry, exit, and performance are not constrained by age. That is, age is no longer a rigid barrier to access.
  
• For individuals, the implication of these flexible criteria is that "flexible lives" are possible. That is, individuals have opportunities over their long lives to intersperse periods of education, work, family time, leisure, and other options.
  

Less familiar is Component B (bringing people of all ages together):

• For structures, "age heterogeneity" means that the aggregate (or cross-section) of people within particular structures differ in age, cohort membership, and the accompaniments.
  
• For individuals, the implication of age heterogeneity is "cross-age interaction." That is, individuals have increased opportunities to interact with others who differ in age.
  

Of course, these two components, although distinct, are interdependent. For example, starting with A, whenever particular structures (such as work organizations or educational systems) open their doors to people regardless of age, the likely consequence (B) is that people of diverse ages will be included in each structure. Or conversely, starting with B, when old and young confront each other in the same work organization or educational system, then the age boundaries of these structures are likely to become institutionalized as more flexible (A).

The important point here is that both components, with their distinctive implications, are essential for understanding age integration.

	Past Research

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Strange as it seems, however, past research has tended to separate the two components. Of the two, the familiar Component A has received far greater attention than has the equally important Component B.

Component A. Flexibility of Criteria and Lives
Impressive scholarship has been devoted to exploring the breakdown of structural age barriers and the consequent flexibility of the individual life course. We ourselves have worked on this component together with many contributors to this working paper at international meetings in Acapulco (1989), Madrid (1990), Stockholm (1992), and Budapest (1993) (see Riley, J. W., & Riley, M. W., 1994; Riley, M. W., & Riley, J. W., 1999). In the 1970s, splendid treatments of this topic were published by Gusta Rehn, Fred Best, Anne-Marie Guillemard, Martin Kohli, Jack Habib, Charlotte Nusberg, and others. So widespread was the interest that, in 1977, a conference on "the three boxes" attracted hundreds of attendees.

Social Changes
Along with these conceptual developments have come numerous actual tendencies toward flexibility of boundaries and lives. Perhaps most apparent are changes in education. Thirty years ago Lowell Eklund 1969 had stressed the special salience for human development of educational restructuring, from kindergarten through programs for the aged. Today, in the United States, education has indeed become increasingly age-integrated and is widely defined as "lifelong." Moreover, there are scattered tendencies for age barriers to become relaxed in other structures: for example, in work (where, in the United States, a large minority of high school students have jobs), and in the family (where kinship boundaries now embrace great-grandparents, even great-great-grandparents). Of course, there are also countertendencies in the United States and elsewhere, as in age-defined programs in medicine and welfare.

Costs and Benefits
Both negative and positive features of relaxed age barriers have been explored in numerous studies. Among the perceived disadvantages is fear of change: change in everyday lives, in vested interests, and in the sense of economic security provided by the "three boxes." Studies have also pointed to failures of the new age-related opportunities in education or work to overcome class and ethnic inequalities or the struggle of many isolated older people in the United States to pay for both rent and food. At the same time, however, flexibility affords benefits: It enhances opportunities and freedom of choice for a great many individuals of all ages, and it may facilitate structural adaptation to global trends in technology, trade, or health.

Component B. Age Heterogeneity and Cross-age Interactions
Far less conceptual and research attention has been paid to Component B, the increasing age heterogeneity of people alive at any one time, and the consequent opportunities for cross-age interactions. Despite the long-standing prevalence of such cross-age interactions as parenting, teaching, or research collaboration, they have not been a major focus of theories of age. Among the exceptions is Robert Merton's remark, in relating science to age, that: "Some basic functions are served through institutional arrangements involving interactions between age strata rather than separation of them." (Zuckerman and Merton 1972, p. 338).

Implications of Age Heterogeneity
While theorists have been looking elsewhere, most social structures, and developed societies as a whole, are being increasingly pervaded by age heterogeneity and its consequences. Consider the fact that, for the first time in history, the people alive at any one time now include remarkably large numbers in the strata aged 65 to 100 or more. Consider also the unprecedented heterogeneity of these many age strata—heterogeneity not only in number and size (cf. Waring 1975), but heterogeneity also in biological functioning; in accumulated experiences; in variety of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and in cohort exposure to the changing events and cultures of successive historical eras.

While the full effects of this mounting age heterogeneity are not yet known, its meaning is gradually becoming clearer. It means increasing opportunities for "cross-age interaction"—as in the United States new forms of mentorship and apprenticeship have been gradually crystallizing. We see college students teaching fifth-graders or isolated old folks; people in nursing homes teaching kindergartners; younger workers learning from experienced elders or, in turn, teaching high-tech skills to their elders; grandparents and grandchildren socializing each other; or "intergenerational partnerships" in which school children and older people interact in institutional settings.

Costs and Benefits
Such interactions across age and generation have well-known disadvantages as well as benefits. Some people prefer the company of age peers, with whom they are likely to share beliefs and interests, as Irving Rosow 1967 showed for older people and Beth Hess 1972 for adolescents. At the same time, relationships with others who differ in age have such benefits as: stimulating wider participation, encouraging the sharing of responsibilities, and preserving the heritage of the past (see Riley 1998). Perhaps the most significant benefit accrues from reciprocal education and training which, again in Merton's 1972 analysis of age (p. 338), refers both to "the narrow sense of transmission of knowledge and skills and [to] the broader sense of socialization involving the transmission of values, attitudes, interests, and role-defined behaviors."

Contributions of Separate Strands
What does this past history tell us? One striking finding stands out: Ironically, with increasing integration, age in itself becomes less significant in Component A, but more significant in Component B. Age becomes less important in Component A because it is no longer a rigid criterion for entry, exit, and performance in structures, whereas in Component B it becomes highly important because the mounting numbers of coexisting age strata emphasize the many age- and cohort-related differences among them. When Bernice Neugarten spoke of "age irrelevance," she clearly was thinking of Component A.

More generally, the past history shows that the strands of research on Components A and B, even though separated, have made complementary contributions to our common understanding of age integration.

	The Future

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Looking toward the future, it seems likely that research toward a fuller understanding of age integration will no longer separate the two components of "flexibility" and "age heterogeneity," but will examine them together. As early as 1974 one little-known study of education foreshadowed the heuristic value of combining the two components. For both youth and old people, as the rigid boundaries of schooling, work, and leisure were already relaxing, the resultant relationships between young and old were seen to foster reciprocal socialization, and to encourage sharing the high energy of youth with the accumulated experience of old age (Riley 1974). Today it is clear that the mounting numbers of older people would place an intolerable burden on younger people, unless age integration gives older people the opportunity to carry a share of the burden.

Incipient Changes
For future investigation of the complementary components of age integration, a spate of social changes is already emerging. For example, the boundaries between childhood and adulthood are becoming blurred in labor laws and the justice system. Research on the malleability of infant brains is calling for new types of communication between mother and baby, just as the gerontological community is calling for more active relationships between adults and their aged parents. Baby-boom parents are reported to take greater interest in their adolescent children than did the preceding cohorts. Communities are being designed with the express purpose of integrating the generations; and colleges are affiliating with nearby retirement communities. Thousands of retired executives are providing advice to small businesses. Even the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is urging employees to spend one lunch hour a week reading a book one-on-one with a first- to sixth-grade student. And so on.

Tracing such developments into the future will yield new insights into the nature of age integration.

Constraints on Prediction
In contemplating the future, of course we cannot simply make projections from the past. Changes in age flexibility (A) and age heterogeneity (B) are unpredictable, and each of the two will influence the other in unknown ways. Most importantly, we cannot foresee the consequences of global changes in technology, economics, migration, or health. If in the past social structures have lagged behind the improvements in people's lives, the world-wide metamorphoses today suggest, by contrast, that we are now facing a "people lag," and age integration appears central to the reversal. For, if structural lag led to age integration in the past, in the future the flexibilities of age integration in turn may well facilitate adaptation of both people and structures to the overarching world changes.

Future Contingencies
As one possible future scenario, suppose that the tendencies toward age integration increase, along with deeper understanding of the combined components. Would not this outcome call attention to some of the most basic issues of the future?

To what extent might flexible age criteria provide more equitable opportunities to people of all backgrounds and creeds?

Might cross-age interaction lead to group solidarity and a sense of community across all age strata, thus reducing the threats of misunderstanding, tension, and intergenerational conflict? As one small example, if old people read to children from Mother Goose or stories from the Bible or Shakespeare, this transmission of the heritage from their generation could provide images and figures of speech to aid communication among generations.

Might the experience with age integration affect the image of a "good society" and, as Peter Uhlenberg suggests, lead to a more productive and a more civil society? Might societal values gradually shift, if the old become accustomed to sharing with the middle-aged some of their responsibilities for work and family, in exchange for leisure time for cultural pursuits, adventure, and recreation? Might today's emphases on consumerism and material rewards give way to strengthened emphases on "connectedness" among all ages?

Predictably, as future studies delve more deeply into the complementarity between "flexibility" and "age heterogeneity," they will amplify the common understandings of the power of age.

	Acknowledgments

 
This essay is in the public domain.

	References

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• Eklund L., 1969. Aging and the field of education. Riley M. W., Riley J. W., Johnson M. E., , ed.Aging and society (Vol. II.) 324-351. Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
• Hess B., 1972. Friendship. Riley M. W., Johnson M., Foner A., , ed.Aging and society (Vol. III) 357-393. Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
• Riley J. W., Jr. Riley M. W., 1994. Beyond productive aging: Changing lives and changing structures. Ageing International June:15-19.
• Riley M. W., 1974. The perspective of age stratification, for the Report on transition to adulthood, the President's Scientific Advisory Committee. School Review 88:58-91.
• Riley M. W., 1998. The hidden age revolution: Emergent integration of all ages. Policy Brief Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
• Riley M. W., Foner A., Riley J. W., Jr. 1999. The aging and society paradigm. Bengtson V. L., Schaie K. W., , ed.Handbook of theories of aging 327-343. Springer, New York.
• Riley M. W., Kahn R. L., Foner A., 1994. Age and structural lag: Society's failure to provide meaningful opportunities in work, family, and leisure Wiley, New York.
• Riley M. W., Riley J. W., Jr. 1994. Age integration and the lives of older people. The Gerontologist 34:110-115. [Abstract]
• Riley M. W., Riley J. W., Jr. 1999. Sociological research on age. Ageing and Society 19:123-135.
• Rosow I., 1967. Social integration of the aged Free Press, New York.
• Vaupel J. W., Jeune B., 1994. The emergence and proliferation of centenarians. Population Studies of Aging, No. 12 Odense University, Odense, Denmark.
• Waring J. M., 1975. Social replenishment and social change: The problem of disordered cohort flow. American Behavioral Scientist 19:237-256.
• Zuckerman H., Merton R. K., 1972. Age, aging, and age structure in science. Riley M. W., Johnson M., Foner A., , ed.Aging and society (Vol. III) 292-356. Russell Sage Foundation, New York.

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