Dawn C. Carr (@DawnCCarr) is the Director of the Claude Pepper Center and an associate professor at Florida State University in the Department of Sociology. Carr is a thought leader in the field of aging, and regularly presents her research to a range of audiences through keynote speeches, policy-related presentations, and seminars with older adults and practitioners. Carr’s research focuses on understanding the factors that bolster older adults’ ability to remain healthy and active as long as possible. Much of her work is dedicated to exploring the relevance, purpose, and factors related to work engagement after age 50 and volunteer engagement. Her recent work focuses on understanding the complex pathways between health and active engagement during later life, including resilience and the impact of key transitions in health, productivity, and caregiving.
Episode Description
Retirement is a threshold - crossing a finish line of sorts. As a new emeritus professor. this is at the front of my mind. Our guest today knows and has studied, this third age of life; a beginning of all kinds of new activities personal, professional, and more. The third age of life is the focus of this episode of Stats and Short Stories.
+Full Transcript
John Bailer
Retirement is a threshold - crossing a finish line of sorts. As a new emeritus professor this is at the front of my mind. Our guest today Florida state's Dawn Carr who knows and has studied, this third age of life; a beginning of all kinds of new activities - personal, professional and more. The third age of life is the focus of this episode of Stats and Short Stories. I'm John Bailer, stats and stories is a production of Miami University's departments of statistics and media, journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist, Rosemary Pennington. Our guest today is Dawn Carr. Carr is the director of the Claude Pepper center, and an associate professor at Florida State University in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on understanding the factors that bolster older adults ability to remain healthy, and active, as long as possible. Carr's recent work focuses on understanding the complex pathways between health and active engagement during later life, including resilience and the impact of key transitions in health, productivity, and caregiving. Well, Dawn, it is just delightful to have you join us on stats and short stories.
Dawn Carr
Thanks so much for having me.
John Bailer
Oh, it's you know, it's so good to see you too. I mean, I've known you for quite a while. And it's fun to have you in the studio and, and see you visiting Miami again, I have to tell you, though, there's been a status change for me since we last met. And in fact, you've even written about it. So here are my status changes. I retired on June 30. And you know, it's very exciting. It is very exciting. Well, thank you. And, you know, I think a lot about kind of, what does a third 30 of life look like? And you know, and so when I was doing some preparation for our previous episode with you, I noticed that you had worked on a book that was Gerontology in the era of the Third Age, implication and next steps. And and I didn't realize I was in the Third Age, I did think 30, you know, and hear it, you said, this is the idea that you're going to be exploring relevance, purpose and factors that contributed to the emergence of a new period of life following one's career, but prior to the onset of frailty and later life, and and there's some really interesting ideas here. One is that frailty is inevitable. That's kind of embedded in this. But there's also this kind of sense of, of what do we do in life as we as we think about kind of our sort of different callings, perhaps at different phases of life? So could you give us just a little bit of a, you know, I don't know if it's more than two tweets worth of summary, but certainly a little bit summary about what you were talking about in this book.
Dawn Carr
Yeah. So this is actually based on the work I did on my dissertation. I was really interested, it seems like a lot of people talk about older adults in their problems. But what I felt like was missing is there's this growing period where people are healthy enough to work, but they don't want it anymore, at least not on a full time basis, with a career, the pace needs to be different. And so this third age is actually common. And I have done some recent work actually showing after the Great Recession, 58% of people who left full time work worked again, at some point. So this is not retirement and like I'm not doing any work. But there's lots of people looking for this phase in terms of meaning and, and they're able to actually stay healthy longer by doing non-career but engaging, meaningful activities.
Rosemary Pennington
My mother lives with me and is in her third year. And one interesting thing for me to watch is that she's really sort of embraced art in a way that she didn't. So she's painting every day and actually submitted some paint to a thing that the City of Oxford is having to try to put some on display. And I wonder for those of us who have people who are at this point in their lives, are there things that we can do to help support them, right? Because it's, it's, it's it's really tricky moment where, you know, they don't want to work, but they want to be engaged and they want to be doing things and then you as the loved one is like, I don't know how to support you and help you. But I want to do that for you.
Dawn Carr
Absolutely. I think the biggest thing is, frankly, we're really ageist about absolute, like, what is later life? And what are you capable of with this notion like you can't learn new things, or that you're not supposed to. And frankly, like the view of aging for the longest time was like you, it's what you're defined by what you don't do, not by what you actually do. And so there wasn't this clear, like set of roles you're supposed to engage in, what are you supposed to be now, we don't have that, we don't have a script that tells us what's next. And I think for people who want to think about others in their life, the main thing is saying, This is an exciting period of growth and development. That's not like any other phase of life. And that is important and should be embraced. Some people aren't so lucky, their health is what moves them out of work. And they can't engage in these things. And they struggle, not that they can't do anything, but their physical health might impair that. For people who aren't not struggling with that. There's all kinds of things. It's time for, you know, think about if you were to go to college and want to learn something, for the first time, I think there's room for that. And there's also the stuff you set aside. My husband used to be in a rock band. For a long time, he was in this really quite successful rock band in the 80s. And he's now in his 50s. And thinking about oh, retirements not that far away now. And boy, he's really gotten into this recording music, and it's like, it's pulling him so I can see he's gonna be excited to retire so he can spend more time on this thing he's very passionate about. So it's not brand new. In that case. It's just I get to dedicate more, more time to something I love.
John Bailer
I mean, this, this resonates with me, obviously. You know, it was funny when I started collaborating with gerontologists. It was with things like casemix scores in nursing homes about the time my grandmother was moving into a nursing home. And when you start having your research touching on your life, you go, Oh, okay. And this was one that I was thinking about and I'm going well, as we consider our futures and as we think about what sort of what does the research suggest about how to approach this kind of Third Age successfully. I mean hearing, I'm hearing engagement. I mean, you know, some people might even do podcasts for the foreseeable future. It gives them joy to some people so you know, we might even know one of them. Yeah. But it's something that gives joy. It's something that keeps engagement. It's something that nurtures this kind of connectedness which is related to the loneliness stuff that you've done in other contexts. Yeah. So I'm just like, are there other things that you have learned in your research? When, as you've probably been studying people who have hit this third age success? Well, however, successfully as defined? Yeah, not successfully. Can you give some advice on this?
Dawn Carr
Yeah, and I agree the word successes, it's a bad way of saying it, because it sort of implies that some people are not. But you know, I would say probably the most potent finding I've had in my research is the benefits of volunteering. And volunteering, especially during the Third Age is remarkably beneficial, even when you account for the types of people who tend to volunteer tend to be healthier than those who don't choose to volunteer. But even when you account for all of that, it's good for your mental health. It's good for recovery from stress, and being able to connect with others, because you're doing something where you can see impact in the world that you're involved with. You're engaging with people who also care about the same stuff. And you're actually physically, cognitively and socially engaged. These are all like the recipe for staying healthy. So volunteering has been something I've studied quite a bit because I was, like, fascinated that volunteering could be a healthy behavior, but it in fact, is and during the Third Age, it seems to have a particularly potent benefit to how you feel and how your help lasts for a long period of time.
John Bailer
Wow. That's just great advice. Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dawn Carr
Thanks so much for having me.
John Bailer Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.