Social Time: Variations in Social Interaction Across the Life Cours

Older and younger people have long been known to have very different social lives. Past research on support and close confidant networks has shown that old age is associated with less and more kin-focused social interaction. Yet, we know remarkably little about the ways in which older versus younger people access their personal networks during the comings-and-goings of daily living. Psychosocial theories, which emphasize preference and personality differences between the young and old, have richly informed explanations of why aging is associated with changes in various network characteristics. However, social structural theories, which emphasize how the availability of other people to interact with varies with the life course, has garnered much less attention as explanations of network differences between the young and old. This dissertation advances the state of knowledge on this topic by examining how people spend their time, who they spend their time with, and the extent to which age differences in time use are explained by life course and social structural factors. To address my research questions, I leverage interpersonal data on who is present during the performance of daily activities from a large sample of U.S. population using the American Time Use Survey. I find that life course and social structural variables account for a large part of the relationship between age and time spent with others. Depending on the relation, the social structure accounts for between 14% and 65% of the variance in social time. I find that elderly people tend to interact with others during leisure activities that are sui generis social while younger adults spend their leisure time with others on all types of leisure. Furthermore, poor health tends to suppress the effects of age on time spent doing certain activities (like social leisure) and tends to augment the effects of age on other activities (like traveling alone). These results strongly suggest that the social structure plays an important role in shaping social interaction across the life course.