Time Use, Disability, and Mobility of Older Americans

Abstract

This study explored how disability, mobility, social and leisure engagement, and travel behavior influence older people’s life satisfaction. The study used the 2013 Disability and Use of Time data for people ages 50 years and older, many of whom reported physical impairments. The study developed a model that related life satisfaction with various time use, disability, and mobility variables. Summary statistics of time use showed that as people aged, they spent more time on solitary, passive leisure activities; social face-to-face time did not seem to change very much. Alone passive leisure time use was especially large for those who experienced a physical mobility-related disability and were carless. The study used an ordinal logistic regression and found that longer alone leisure time uses were associated with lower life satisfaction. Life satisfaction was positively affected by transportation variables, such as vehicle availability. The study also found that social face-to-face time use had a weak positive relationship with life satisfaction, and technology-mediated social activities had a strong negative relationship with life satisfaction.