Time Budgets of Older People: a Window on Four Lifestyles

The purposes of this research were first to describe how a group of urban elderly spend their days and, second, to examine the responsiveness of the behavioral day to rather marked environmental and personal differences. Detailed time budgets for one full day (including the content, duration, social and environmental context, and the amount of liking for each activity) were obtained from 535 persons, from four groups: independent community residents, public housing tenants, recipients of intensive in-home services, and an institutional waiting list group. Consistent patterns appeared across groups, particularly in the amount of time spent in the various social contexts and in most discretionary activities. However, the independent groups spent more time than the service groups away from home and in obligatory tasks such as housework, cooking, and shopping. Independent groups tended to express greater liking for many activities but not for more novel activities which the service groups liked equally as well.