Life satisfaction and leisure time among the elderly population

Abstract

The well-being of the elderly population has garnered significant attention as their numbers continue to grow. Life satisfaction serves as a key indicator to assess the quality of life among older adults. Among the factors that play a crucial role in shaping their overall life satisfaction, the allocation of time and how it is utilized has gained considerable attention. This paper aims to suggest a specification and estimation model of the relationship between time use patterns of the elderly and their life satisfaction, in Italy. Using data from the 2013 Use of Time Survey conducted in Italy by Istat, we estimate the relationship between life satisfaction and socio-demographic characteristics frequency of social interactions, identifying empirically the influence of time spent on unpaid work, media leisure, and non media leisure activities of, respectively, young old and older old individuals. We found how engagement in unpaid work and media and non-media leisure activities, friendship, a good economic condition and belonging to a large family positively influenced life satisfaction, especially of the older old, while stress is negatively correlated with it.