Social Participation across Mid- and Later-life: Evidence from a Longitudinal Cohort Study

Abstract

Despite the benefits of social participation for individuals and communities, little is known about how social participation varies over the life course. Drawing upon data collected between 1957 and 2011 by the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (22,023 observations from a cohort of 6,627), this study provides four valuable results. First, I find evidence of five distinct social participation trajectories; the majority of which demonstrate social disengagement as individuals age. Second, these decreases were primarily attributable to declines in meeting friends and group exercise. Third, the activities most likely to predict being a part of more-desirable trajectories were cultural event attendance, voluntary group membership, and joining charity groups. Last, I find that seven different types of high school activities were each associated with greater social activity counts, decades later. In total, these results highlight systematic differences in social participation trajectories and suggest that age-graded participation changes are highly dependent on the underlying social activities.