Older Americans are wary of changes to Medicare. Compared with younger people, they are more positive about the way the program operates, less apt to think that changes are needed and far less disposed towards Paul Ryan’s proposal to reshape Medicare.

Read the full analysis.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email, at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

Read the full report.

Your examples refer to two different kinds of studies. In some reports, we present data on age cohorts, also called generations. These are groups of people who share a specific set of birth years. The Baby Boomers are perhaps the best known example of an age cohort. This is a generation born in the years following World War II (typically limited to 1946-1964). Another generation we have reported on is the Millennials, the country’s youngest adults (we define them as adults born after 1980). Our typical generational analysis will compare the attitudes and characteristics of a generation not only with other generations but also with themselves using data from surveys conducted years earlier.

In other reports, we are simply comparing different age groups at one point in time. In these reports, we use labels commonly associated with the stage of life in which the group is located. Admittedly, we aren’t fully consistent in how we label different age groups, occasionally using “seniors” interchangeably with “older adults” and other synonyms. We do try very hard to avoid the use of the term “elderly,” since many people find the term objectionable, and there is little agreement on how old one must be to be elderly.

Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research, Pew Research Center

Overview

Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22% to 42% over the past year.

While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Although email continues to be the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, many users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications — sharing links, photos, videos, news and status updates with a growing network of contacts.

Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites.

Half of online adults ages 50-64 and one-in-four wired seniors now count themselves among the Facebooking and LinkedIn masses. That’s up from just 25% of online adults ages 50-64 and 13% of those ages 65 and older who reported social networking use one year ago in a survey conducted in April 2009.

Young adult internet users ages 18-29 continue to be the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, with 86% saying they use the sites. However, over the past year, their growth paled in comparison with the gains made by older users. Between April 2009 and May 2010, internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88% and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites, compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.

One-in-ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one-in-twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.

The use of Twitter and other services to share status updates has also grown among older users — most notably among those ages 50-64. While just 5% of users ages 50-64 had used Twitter or another status-update service in 2009, 11% now say they use these tools. On a typical day, 6% of online adults ages 50-64 make Twitter a part of their routine, up from the 1% who did so in 2009.

By comparison, social networking sites have gained a much larger foothold in the lives of older Americans over time. One-in-five (20%) online adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago. Likewise, 13% of online adults ages 65 and older log on to social networking sites, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.

Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.

While email may be falling out of favor with today’s teenagers, older adults still rely on it heavily as an essential tool for their daily communications. Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day. Online news gathering also ranks highly in the daily media habits of older adults; 76% of internet users ages 50-64 get news online, and 42% do so on a typical day. Among internet users ages 65 and older, 62% look for news online and 34% do so on a typical day.

Social media properties — including networking and status-update sites — are newer additions to the daily digital diet of older adults. Yet, the “stickiness” of the sites is notable. To look at the data another way, among the pool of adults ages 50 and older who use social networking sites, 44% used them on the day prior to their being contacted for our survey.

The pool of Twitter and status update users ages 50 and older is too small to segment, but the behavior of this limited early adopter group does suggest a similar tendency towards regular use of the sites.

By comparison, less than half of online banking users ages 50 and older visited the sites on a typical day and less than one-in-five older users of online classified sites reported use of the sites “yesterday.”

Continue reading the full report at pewinternet.org.

This year, older Americans want to rock the political establishment. People ages 50 and older have a more negative view of congressional incumbents than do younger people. Nearly a third of those ages 65 and older say they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who has never held elective office — the highest percentage of any age group.

And while majorities or pluralities of those in age groups from 18 to 64 say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is willing to make compromises, that is not the case with those ages 65 and older: Just 29% of seniors say they would be more likely to back such a candidate while about as many (32%) would be less likely to vote for a candidate willing to compromise.

Clearly, partisanship also is a major factor in the public’s views of characteristics of congressional candidates. The Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, sponsored by SHRM, conducted May 20-23 among 1,002 adults, found far more Republicans than Democrats saying they would be less likely to vote for an incumbent running for reelection (43% Republican vs. 17% Democrat) as well as for a candidate willing to compromise (40% vs. 19%). A higher percentage of Republicans (32%) than Democrats (16%) also said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate lacking prior elected experience.

Pew Research Center surveys have consistently found that older Americans tend to be more Republican and conservative compared with younger people. However, even when partisanship is taken into account, age differences in views of candidate traits are evident. The differences in opinions between younger and older Republicans are particularly stark.

Age Gaps among Republicans

On balance, younger Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (ages 18 to 49) have a positive view of a candidate who is willing to make compromises with people they disagree with: 42% say they would be more likely to vote for such a candidate, 26% less likely and 31% say it would make no difference.

But just 18% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents ages 65 and older say they would be more likely to favor a candidate who is willing to make compromises, while more than twice as many (45%) say they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate and 31% say it would make no difference.

Anti-incumbent sentiment also is more widespread among Republicans and GOP leaners older than age 50 (50% less likely to vote for an incumbent) than those younger than age 50 (37%).

About four-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents ages 65 and older (43%) say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who has never held elective office; 29% say they would be less likely to vote for a political novice and 21% say it would make no difference. Republicans younger than age 50 are more divided — 28% say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who never held elective office, 27% say less likely and 42% no difference.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, age differences are evident, though less pronounced. Fewer Democrats age 50 and older (45%) than those under 50 (57%) say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate willing to compromise. In addition, a greater proportion of younger Democrats say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who has never held elective office (40% vs. 24% of those 50 and older).

Negative Views of Congress

An earlier Congressional Connection Poll, conducted May 13-16, found that the public was highly critical of Congress. Just 13% said it was doing an excellent or good job; 38% said only fair; and 44% said poor.

People age 65 and older expressed a particularly negative view of Congress’s performance: Fully 59% said that Congress was doing a poor job. Nearly as many of those ages 50 to 64 (50%) shared that view, but far fewer of 30-to-49-year-olds (41%) and those under age 30 (24%) took a very negative view of Congress. Similarly, 40% of seniors said President Obama was doing a poor job; just a quarter as many young people (10%) gave Obama very low job ratings.

Those under age 30 stood out for their relatively positive views of national conditions. Fewer than half (47%) said they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in the country; substantial majorities in older age groups — including 74% of those 65 and older — were dissatisfied.

Older Republicans Even More Negative

Not surprisingly, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were generally very critical of Congress and President Obama, and overwhelmingly dissatisfied with national conditions. Yet even among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, those age 65 and older had the most negative assessments.

Fully 78% said that Congress was doing a poor job, compared with 65% of those ages 50 to 64 and 50% of those under age 50. Nearly two-thirds (66%) of Republicans and GOP leaners who are 65 and older said Obama is doing a poor job, as did 60% of those ages 50 to 64. By comparison, 46% of Republicans under age 50 said that Obama was doing a poor job.

And while large majorities of all Republicans and Republican leaners took a dim view of national conditions and expressed little or no confidence that the government will make progress over the next year on the most important problems facing the country, negative sentiments were nearly universal among the oldest Republicans. Roughly nine-in-ten of those age 65 and older (91%) said they were dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., while about as many (89%) expected the government to make little or no progress on major issues.

For more on….

Views of Candidates, Congress
Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Polls

• May 24, 2010 Poll
• May 18, 2010 Poll

Views of Government
Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor
April 18, 2010

Age and Party Affiliation
Democrats’ Edge among Millennials Slips
February 18, 2010

Overview

The American work force is graying — and not just because the American population itself is graying. Older adults are staying in the labor force longer, and younger adults are staying out of it longer. Both trends took shape about two decades ago. Both have intensified during the current recession. And both are expected to continue after the economy recovers. According to one government estimate, 93% of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older.

Demographic and economic factors explain some — but not all — of these changes. Attitudes about work also play an important role — in particular, the growing desire of an aging but healthy population to stay active well into the later years of life.

A new nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project finds that a majority (54%) of workers ages 65 and older say the main reason they work is that they want to. Just 17% say the main reason is that they need the paycheck. An additional 27% say they’re motivated by a mix of desire and need.

When asked to identify specific reasons for working, older workers emphasize psychological and social factors: “to feel useful”; “to give myself something to do”; “to be with other people.” Younger and middle-aged workers are much more inclined to cite classic pocketbook considerations: “to support myself and my family”; “to live independently”; “to qualify for retirement benefits”; “to receive health care benefits.”

To be sure, the current state of the economy has influenced nearly everyone’s calculations about work to some extent. But the recession appears to be having a very different impact, depending on age — keeping older adults in the labor force and younger ones out of it.

According to the Pew Research survey, nearly four-in-ten adults who are working past the median retirement age of 62 say they have delayed their retirement because of the recession. Among workers ages 50 to 61, fully 63% say they might have to push back their expected retirement date because of current economic conditions.

All of these survey findings are consistent with a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data that show that the labor force participation rate of older adults, which declined from 1950 until the middle of the 1980s, has been rising ever since. This trend has accelerated during this decade, especially in the current recession.

At the other end of the age spectrum, census data show that in the current decade, a rising share of Americans ages 16 to 24 are in school and a declining share are in the labor force — 57% today versus 66% in 2000.

The Pew Research survey identifies two factors that help explain these changing patterns among the young. First, a growing share of the public says that a person needs a college education to get ahead in life; about three-quarters (73%) of the public feels this way now, up from about half (49%) in 1978. Second, younger adults (like all adults) are being hit hard by the recession, and some may have become discouraged and dropped out of the labor market.

Overall, more than four-in-ten nonworking people ages 16 to 24 say they’ve looked for work but can’t find anything.

Gender Shifts

Age is not the only demographic characteristic of the work force that’s changing. There are also new developments on the gender front — but here, the most compelling story of the decade is not the presence of change but the absence of change.

After marching steadily upward for five decades, the labor force participation rate of women has essentially flattened out. It now stands at 59%, slightly below the 60% peak it reached in 2000 at the end of a period of robust economic growth, and about 13 percentage points below the current rate for men.

Even in an era of growing gender parity in the workplace, the work/family trade-off continues to be much more complicated for women than for men. The Pew Research survey dramatizes these disparities; it finds that nonworking women are nine times as likely as nonworking men to cite the tug of family responsibility as a key reason for not having a job. The survey also finds that only a small share of the public — 12% — thinks the ideal situation for a mother of young children is to work full time outside the home.

As for men, their labor force participation rate has declined in this decade — just as it has every decade since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping such records in 1948. As of June 2009, it stood at 72%, the lowest level in modern history. The current economic downturn has hit men harder than women, with men suffering about two-thirds of all recession-related job losses. As often happens in a recession, a portion of these newly unemployed workers have become discouraged about finding jobs and have dropped out of the labor force altogether.

Other Findings

This report is based on a Pew Research Center analysis of long-term trends in survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as on Pew Research’s own survey of a representative national sample of 1,815 people ages 16 and older conducted from July 20 to Aug. 2, 2009. Among its other key findings:

• Security trumps salary. By a ratio of nearly two-to-one, survey respondents say they would prefer a job that offers better security (59%) over one that offers higher pay (33%) but less stability. It’s not the recession that drives this preference. A similar question asked by the General Social Survey in 1989 (when the economy was in the midst of an expansion) produced a similar result.
• Despite tough times, job satisfaction remains high. Even in the face of widespread layoffs, pay freezes and involuntary furloughs, nine-in-ten employed adults say they are either completely (30%) or mostly (60%) satisfied with their job. In recent decades, levels of job satisfaction have tended to remain stable through good times and bad.
• Older workers are the happiest workers. Some 54% of workers ages 65 and older say they are “completely satisfied” with their job, compared with just 29% of workers ages 16 to 64. The explanation lies in figures cited above — a high percentage of these workers are working because they want to, not because they need to.
• Retirement is not always voluntary. Only about half (51%) of all current retirees say they retired because they wanted to. About a third (32%) say they had to retire for health or other reasons, and about one-in-ten (9%) say their employer forced them to retire.
• Even so, retirement gets high marks. More than half of all retirees (57%) say their retirement has turned out to be very satisfying; an additional 23% say it has been fairly satisfying. Only about one-in-six describe retirement as not too (10%) or not at all (6%) satisfying.
• The public is skeptical about full-time working moms. Just 14% of men and 10% of women say that a full-time job is the “ideal” situation for a woman who has a young child. A plurality of the public (44%) say a part-time job is ideal for such a mother, while a sizable minority (38%) say the ideal situation is for her not to work outside the home at all.
• Most working moms would rather have a part-time job. Among mothers of young children who have a full-time job outside the home, six-in-ten (61%) say they would prefer to work part time. By contrast, just 19% of fathers who have a full-time job and a young child say they would prefer to work part time.

Continue reading the full report at pewsocialtrends.org.

Getting old isn’t nearly as bad as people think it will be. Nor is it quite as good.

On aspects of everyday life ranging from mental acuity to physical dexterity to sexual activity to financial security, a new Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey on aging among a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults finds a sizable gap between the expectations that young and middle-aged adults have about old age and the actual experiences reported by older Americans themselves.

These disparities come into sharpest focus when survey respondents are asked about a series of negative benchmarks often associated with aging, such as illness, memory loss, an inability to drive, an end to sexual activity, a struggle with loneliness and depression, and difficulty paying bills. In every instance, older adults report experiencing them at lower levels (often far lower) than younger adults report expecting to encounter them when they grow old. At the same time, however, older adults report experiencing fewer of the benefits of aging that younger adults expect to enjoy when they grow old, such as spending more time with their family, traveling more for pleasure, having more time for hobbies, doing volunteer work or starting a second career.

These generation gaps in perception also extend to the most basic question of all about old age: When does it begin? Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74.

Other potential markers of old age — such as forgetfulness, retirement, becoming sexually inactive, experiencing bladder control problems, getting gray hair, having grandchildren — are the subjects of similar perceptual gaps. For example, nearly two-thirds of adults ages 18 to 29 believe that when someone “frequently forgets familiar names,” that person is old. Less than half of all adults ages 30 and older agree.

However, a handful of potential markers — failing health, an inability to live independently, an inability to drive, difficulty with stairs — engender agreement across all generations about the degree to which they serve as an indicator of old age.

Grow Older, Feel Younger

The survey findings would seem to confirm the old saw that you’re never too old to feel young. In fact, it shows that the older people get, the younger they feel-relatively speaking. Among 18 to 29 year-olds, about half say they feel their age, while about quarter say they feel older than their age and another quarter say they feel younger. By contrast, among adults 65 and older, fully 60% say they feel younger than their age, compared with 32% who say they feel exactly their age and just 3% who say they feel older than their age.

Moreover, the gap in years between actual age and “felt age” widens as people grow older. Nearly half of all survey respondents ages 50 and older say they feel at least 10 years younger than their chronological age. Among respondents ages 65 to 74, a third say they feel 10 to 19 years younger than their age, and one-in-six say they feel at least 20 years younger than their actual age.

In sync with this upbeat way of counting their felt age, older adults also have a count-my-blessings attitude when asked to look back over the full arc of their lives. Nearly half (45%) of adults ages 75 and older say their life has turned out better than they expected, while just 5% say it has turned out worse (the remainder say things have turned out the way they expected or have no opinion). All other age groups also tilt positive, but considerably less so, when asked to assess their lives so far against their own expectations.

The Downside of Getting Old

To be sure, there are burdens that come with old age. About one-in-four adults ages 65 and older report experiencing memory loss. About one-in-five say they have a serious illness, are not sexually active, or often feel sad or depressed. About one-in-six report they are lonely or have trouble paying bills. One-in-seven cannot drive. One-in-ten say they feel they aren’t needed or are a burden to others.
But when it comes to these and other potential problems related to old age, the share of younger and middle-aged adults who report expecting to encounter them is much higher than the share of older adults who report actually experiencing them.

Moreover, these problems are not equally shared by all groups of older adults. Those with low incomes are more likely than those with high incomes to face these challenges. The only exception to this pattern has to do with sexual inactivity; the likelihood of older adults reporting a problem in this realm of life is not correlated with income.

Not surprisingly, troubles associated with aging accelerate as adults advance into their 80s and beyond. For example, about four-in-ten respondents (41%) ages 85 and older say they are experiencing some memory loss, compared with 27% of those ages 75-84 and 20% of those ages 65-74. Similarly, 30% of those ages 85 and older say they often feel sad or depressed, compared with less than 20% of those who are 65-84. And a quarter of adults ages 85 and older say they no longer drive, compared with 17% of those ages 75-84 and 10% of those who are 65-74.

But even in the face of these challenges, the vast majority of the “old old” in our survey appear to have made peace with their circumstances. Only a miniscule share of adults ages 85 and older — 1% — say their lives have turned out worse than they expected. It no doubt helps that adults in their late 80s are as likely as those in their 60s and 70s to say that they are experiencing many of the good things associated with aging — be it time with family, less stress, more respect or more financial security.

The Upside of Getting Old

When asked about a wide range of potential benefits of old age, seven-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older say they are enjoying more time with their family. About two-thirds cite more time for hobbies, more financial security and not having to work. About six-in-ten say they get more respect and feel less stress than when they were younger. Just over half cite more time to travel and to do volunteer work.

As seen in the chart, older adults may not experience these “upsides” at quite the prevalence levels that most younger adults expect to enjoy them once they grow old, but their responses nonetheless indicate that the phrase “golden years” is something more than a syrupy greeting card sentiment.

Of all the good things about getting old, the best by far, according to older adults, is being able to spend more time with family members. In response to an open-ended question, 28% of those ages 65 and older say that what they value most about being older is the chance to spend more time with family, and an additional 25% say that above all, they value time with their grandchildren. A distant third on this list is having more financial security, which was cited by 14% of older adults as what they value most about getting older.

People Are Living Longer

These survey findings come at a time when older adults account for record shares of the populations of the United States and most developed countries. Some 39 million Americans, or 13% of the U.S. population, are ages 65 and older — up from 4% in 1900. The century-long expansion in the share of the world’s population that is 65 and older is the product of dramatic advances in medical science and public health as well as steep declines in fertility rates. In this country, the increase has leveled off since 1990, but it will start rising again when the first wave of the nation’s 76 million baby boomers turn 65 in 2011. By 2050, according to Pew Research projections, about one-in-five Americans will be over age 65, and about 5% will be ages 85 and older, up from 2% now. These ratios will put the U.S. at mid-century roughly where Japan, Italy and Germany — the three “oldest” large countries in the world — are today.

Contacting Older Adults

Any survey that focuses on older adults confronts one obvious methodological challenge: A small but not insignificant share of people 65 and older are either too ill or incapacitated to take part in a 20-minute telephone survey, or they live in an institutional setting such as a nursing home where they cannot be contacted.

We assume that the older adults we were unable to reach for these reasons have a lower quality of life, on average, than those we did reach. To mitigate this problem, the survey included interviews with more than 800 adults whose parents are ages 65 or older. We asked these adult children many of the same questions about their parents’ lives that we asked of older adults about their own lives. These “surrogate” respondents provide a window on the experiences of the full population of older adults, including those we could not reach directly. Not surprisingly, the portrait of old age they draw is somewhat more negative than the one painted by older adult respondents themselves. We present a summary of these second-hand observations at the end of Section I (in the full PDF report) in the belief that the two perspectives complement one another and add texture to our report.

Here is a summary of other key findings from the survey:

Perceptions about Aging

The Generation Gap, Circa 2009.

In a 1969 Gallup Poll, 74% of respondents said there was a generation gap, with the phrase defined in the survey question as “a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today.” When the same question was asked a decade later, in 1979, by CBS and The New York Times, just 60% perceived a generation gap.

But in perhaps the single most intriguing finding in this new Pew Research survey, the share that say there is a generation gap has spiked to 79% — despite the fact that there have been few overt generational conflicts in recent times of the sort that roiled the 1960s. It could be that the phrase now means something different, and less confrontational, than it did at the height of the counterculture’s defiant challenges to the establishment 40 years ago. Whatever the current understanding of the term “generation gap,” roughly equal shares of young, middle-aged and older respondents in the new survey agree that such a gap exists. The most common explanation offered by respondents of all ages has to do with differences in morality, values and work ethic. Relatively few cite differences in political outlook or in uses of technology.

When Does Old Age Begin?

At 68. That’s the average of all answers from the 2,969 survey respondents. But as noted above, this average masks a wide, age-driven variance in responses. More than half of adults under age 30 say the average person becomes old even before turning 60. Just 6% of adults who are age 65 or older agree. Moreover, gender as well as age influences attitudes on this subject. Women, on average, say a person becomes old at age 70. Men, on average, put the number at 66. In addition, on all 10 of the non-chronological potential markers of old age tested in this survey, men are more inclined than women to say the marker is a proxy for old age.

Are You Old?

Certainly not! Public opinion in the aggregate may decree that the average person becomes old at age 68, but you won’t get too far trying to convince people that age that the threshold applies to them. Among respondents ages 65-74, just 21% say they feel old. Even among those who are 75 and older, just 35% say they feel old.

What Age Would You Like to Live To?

The average response from our survey respondents is 89. One-in-five would like to live into their 90s, and 8% say they’d like to surpass the century mark. The public’s verdict on the most desirable life span appears to have ratcheted down a bit in recent years. A 2002 AARP survey found that the average desired life span was 92.

Everyday Life

What Do Older People Do Every Day?

Among all adults ages 65 and older, nine-in-ten talk with family or friends every day. About eight-in-ten read a book, newspaper or magazine, and the same share takes a prescription drug daily. Three-quarters watch more than a hour of television; about the same share prays daily. Nearly two-thirds drive a car. Less than half spend time on a hobby. About four-in-ten take a nap; about the same share goes shopping. Roughly one-in-four use the internet, get vigorous exercise or have trouble sleeping. Just 4% get into an argument with someone. As adults move deeper into their 70s and 80s, daily activity levels diminish on most fronts-especially when it comes to exercising and driving. On the other hand, daily prayer and daily medication both increase with age.

Are Older Adults Happy?

They’re about as happy as everyone else. And perhaps more importantly, the same factors that predict happiness among younger adults-good health, good friends and financial security-by and large predict happiness among older adults. However, there are a few age-related differences in life’s happiness sweepstakes. Most notably, once all other key demographic variables are held constant, being married is a predictor of happiness among younger adults but not among older adults (perhaps because a significant share of the latter group is made up of widows or widowers, many of whom presumably have “banked” some of the key marriage-related correlates of happiness, such as financial security and a strong family life). Among all older adults, happiness varies very little by age, gender or race.

Retirement and Old Age.

Retirement is a place without clear borders. Fully 83% of adults ages 65 and older describe themselves as retired, but the word means different things to different people. Just three-quarters of adults (76%) 65 and older fit the classic stereotype of the retiree who has completely left the working world behind. An additional 8% say they are retired but are working part time, while 2% say they are retired but working full time and 3% say they are retired but looking for work. The remaining 11% of the 65-and-older population describe themselves as still in the labor force, though not all of them have jobs.

Whatever the fuzziness around these definitions, one trend is crystal clear from government data : After falling steadily for decades, the labor force participation rate of older adults began to trend back upward about 10 years ago. In the Pew Research survey, the average retiree is 75 years old and retired at age 62.

Living Arrangements.

More than nine-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older live in their own home or apartment, and the vast majority are either very satisfied (67%) or somewhat satisfied (21%) with their living arrangements. However, many living patterns change as adults advance into older age. For example, just 30% of adults ages 65-74 say they live alone, compared with 66% of adults ages 85 and above. Also, just 2% of adults ages 65-74 and 4% of adults ages 75-84 say they live in an assisted living facility, compared with 15% of those ages 85 and above.

Old-School Social Networking.

The great majority of adults ages 65 and older (81%) say they have people around them, other than family, on whom they can rely on for social activities and companionship. About three-quarters say they have someone they can talk to when they have a personal problem; six-in-ten say they have someone they can turn to for help with errands, appointments and other daily activities. On the flip side of the coin, three-in-ten older adults say they “often” help out other older adults who are in need of assistance, and an additional 35% say they sometimes do this. Most of these social connections remain intact as older adults continue to age, but among those 85 and above, the share that say they often or sometimes provide assistance to others drops to 44%.

The Twitter Revolution Hasn’t Landed Here.

If there’s one realm of modern life where old and young behave very differently, it’s in the adoption of newfangled information technologies. Just four-in-ten adults ages 65-74 use the internet on a daily basis, and that share drops to just one-in-six among adults 75 and above. By contrast, three-quarters of adults ages 18-30 go online daily. The generation gap is even wider when it comes to cell phones and text messages. Among adults 65 and older, just 5% get most or all of their calls on a cell phone, and just 11% sometimes use their cell phone to send or receive a text message. For adults under age 30, the comparable figures are 72% and 87%, respectively.

Religion and Old Age.

Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults than younger adults. Two-thirds of adults ages 65 and older say religion is very important to them, compared with just over half of those ages 30 to 49 and just 44% of those ages 18 to 29. Moreover, among adults ages 65 and above, a third (34%) say religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, while just 4% say it has become less important and the majority (60%) say it has stayed the same. Among those who are over 65 and report having an illness or feeling sad, the share who say that religion has become more important to them rises to 43%.

Family Relationships

Staying in Touch with the Kids.

Nearly nine-in-ten adults (87%) ages 65 and older have children. Of this group, just over half are in contact with a son or daughter every day, and an additional 40% are in contact with at least one child-either in person, by phone or by email-at least once a week. Mothers and daughters are in the most frequent contact; fathers and daughters the least. Sons fall in the middle, and they keep in touch with older mothers and fathers at equal rates. Overall, three-quarters of adults who have a parent or parents ages 65 and older say they are very satisfied with their relationship with their parent(s), but that share falls to 62% if a parent needs help caring for his or her needs.

Was the Great Bard Mistaken?

Shakespeare wrote that the last of the “seven ages of man” is a second childhood. Through the centuries, other poets and philosophers have observed that parents and children often reverse roles as parents grow older. Not so, says the Pew Research survey. Just 12% of parents ages 65 and older say they generally rely on their children more than their children rely on them. An additional 14% say their children rely more on them. The majority — 58% — says neither relies on the other, and 13% say they rely on one another equally. Responses to this question from children of older parents are broadly similar.

Intergenerational Transfers within Families.

Despite these reported patterns of non-reliance, older parents and their adult children do help each other out in a variety of ways. However, the perspectives on these transfers of money and time differ by generation. For example, about half (51%) of parents ages 65 and older say they have given their children money in the past year, while just 14% say their children have given them money. The intra-family accounting comes out quite differently from the perspective of adult children. Among survey respondents who have a parent or parents ages 65 or older, a quarter say they received money from a parent in the past year, while an almost equal share (21%) say they gave money to their parent(s). There are similar difference in perception, by generation, about who helps whom with errands and other daily activities. (To be clear, the survey did not interview specific pairs of parents and children; rather, it contacted random samples who fell into these and other demographic categories.) Not surprisingly, as parents advance deeper into old age, both they and the adult children who have such parents report that the balance of assistance tilts more toward children helping parents.

Conversations about End-of-Life Matters.

More than three-quarters of adults ages 65 and older say they’ve talked with their children about their wills; nearly two-thirds say they’ve talked about what to do if they can no longer make their own medical decisions, and more than half say they’ve talked with their children about what to do if they can no longer live independently. Similar shares of adult children of older parents report having had these conversations. Parents and adult children agree that it is the parents who generally initiate these conversations, though 70% of older adults report that this is the case, compared with just 52% of children of older parents who say the same.

Read the full report including methodology and topline survey findings at pewsocialtrends.org