Future mobility in an ageing society:Where are we heading?

The demographic profile of UK society is changing as people live longer. Maintaining the wellbeing and quality of life of an ageing society is set to be extremely challenging. To what extent can the state afford to meet a potentially burgeoning demand for social care? What expectations will be placed upon informal carers to enable the system to cope? In what ways and to what extent might assistive technologies have a part to play in supporting people both in terms of active ageing and in relation to coping with failing health? Beyond these questions is one which is more explicitly pertinent to transport policy: how and where will older people live and how will this affect patterns of mobility and levels of travel demand? This paper reports on a scenario planning exercise which has examined four different futures for living in later life, defined by considering two critical uncertainties: the extent to which older people in society engage with new healthcare technologies; and the extent to which the state provides care for people living in later life. The scenarios, explored with transport, ageing and assistive technology experts, serve to highlight how social practices may be shaped in very different ways both for older people and for those with whom they interact. The paper goes on to examine the implications for future mobility – such as the role of the home as a trip attractor as well as a trip generator – as well as to explore the extent to which transport policymakers are equipped to address the uncertainties for the transport system of an ageing society

Parental marital dissolution and the intergenerational transmission of homeownership

Children of homeowners are more likely to enter homeownership than are children whose parents rent. We investigate whether this association is dependent on parental divorce, focusing on parental assistance as a conduit of intergenerational transmission. Event history analyses of data for England and Wales from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) show that the intergenerational transmission of homeownership is stronger for children of divorced parents compared with children of married parents. Such an effect may arise from two channels: (1) children of divorced parents are more in need of parental assistance due to socio-economic disadvantages associated with parental divorce; and (2) compared with married parents, divorced homeowning parents (mothers) rely more on housing wealth, rather than financial wealth, for assisting children. Findings support both explanations. Children of divorced parents are furthermore less likely to co-reside. We find limited evidence that when they do, co-residence is less conductive to homeownership compared with children from married parents

Information and Communication Technologies and the spatio-temporal fragmentation of everyday life

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet and mobile phone, are thought to enable the temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities. In this process activities, such as shopping and paid work, are divided into smaller subtasks and carried out at different times and different locations, or both. This fragmentation is made possible by the weakening of some of the ties activities have to specific times and locations. Paid work, for example, for many people used to be tied to standard office hours and a specific office location. Those who are believed to benefit from using ICTs include employed adults who are experiencing difficulties in combining paid and unpaid work demands. However, the possible temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities and its associations with ICT use has received hardly any empirical support, a gap which the research reported in this dissertation is one of the first to address. More specifically, the research goal was to investigate the extent of fragmentation of everyday activities in time and space, and how this depends on individuals’ ICT use and reconciliation of home, work and leisure. This is one of the first studies to develop a set of indicators with which the level of temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities can be determined. By applying these indicators of activity fragmentation, it provides insights into the ways in which people employ ICTs in their everyday practices and the consequences this has for their activity patterns. Two-day combined activity, travel and communication diaries collected among Dutch households in 2007 have been analysed. ICTs were consistently found to be related to the fragmentation of the various activities that were studied. In general, fragmentation was higher when ICTs were used more extensively, although there were also instances where the activities of people who used ICTs were actually the least fragmented. The results also indicated that it makes a difference which particular type of ICT is being used. Personal Digital Assistant (smart phone) users had temporally more fragmented paid work activities, whereas using a laptop made no difference. Differences also exist between the various activity types, as people with moderate levels of ICT use had the most fragmented leisure activities, while paid work was most fragmented for people with high levels of ICT use. Gender differences in the relation between ICTs and the fragmentation of paid work, form an interesting example of how the use of ICTs is not solely dictated by its technological possibilities, but also by the specific employment context in which they are used, by whom, and with what purpose. On only one occasion ICTs had the strongest associations with the fragmentation of an activity. Therefore discussions on how the fragmentation of activities can be stimulated, and the potential benefits of ICT use for the reconciliation of paid and unpaid work demands, should also recognise the influence of non-ICT factors, such as employment characteristics. Failing to acknowledge the relevance of these factors could result in unrealistic expectations with regard to the potential benefits of ICTs

Information and Communication Technologies and the spatio-temporal fragmentation of everyday life

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet and mobile phone, are thought to enable the temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities. In this process activities, such as shopping and paid work, are divided into smaller subtasks and carried out at different times and different locations, or both. This fragmentation is made possible by the weakening of some of the ties activities have to specific times and locations. Paid work, for example, for many people used to be tied to standard office hours and a specific office location. Those who are believed to benefit from using ICTs include employed adults who are experiencing difficulties in combining paid and unpaid work demands. However, the possible temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities and its associations with ICT use has received hardly any empirical support, a gap which the research reported in this dissertation is one of the first to address. More specifically, the research goal was to investigate the extent of fragmentation of everyday activities in time and space, and how this depends on individuals’ ICT use and reconciliation of home, work and leisure. This is one of the first studies to develop a set of indicators with which the level of temporal and spatial fragmentation of activities can be determined. By applying these indicators of activity fragmentation, it provides insights into the ways in which people employ ICTs in their everyday practices and the consequences this has for their activity patterns. Two-day combined activity, travel and communication diaries collected among Dutch households in 2007 have been analysed. ICTs were consistently found to be related to the fragmentation of the various activities that were studied. In general, fragmentation was higher when ICTs were used more extensively, although there were also instances where the activities of people who used ICTs were actually the least fragmented. The results also indicated that it makes a difference which particular type of ICT is being used. Personal Digital Assistant (smart phone) users had temporally more fragmented paid work activities, whereas using a laptop made no difference. Differences also exist between the various activity types, as people with moderate levels of ICT use had the most fragmented leisure activities, while paid work was most fragmented for people with high levels of ICT use. Gender differences in the relation between ICTs and the fragmentation of paid work, form an interesting example of how the use of ICTs is not solely dictated by its technological possibilities, but also by the specific employment context in which they are used, by whom, and with what purpose. On only one occasion ICTs had the strongest associations with the fragmentation of an activity. Therefore discussions on how the fragmentation of activities can be stimulated, and the potential benefits of ICT use for the reconciliation of paid and unpaid work demands, should also recognise the influence of non-ICT factors, such as employment characteristics. Failing to acknowledge the relevance of these factors could result in unrealistic expectations with regard to the potential benefits of ICTs

The fragmented worker?:ICTs, coping strategies and gender differences in the temporal and spatial fragmentation of paid labour

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are often proclaimed to facilitate the fragmentation of activities, a process whereby a certain activity is divided into several smaller pieces, which are performed at different times and/or locations. This study analyzes two-day combined activity, travel and communication diaries collected among Dutch households and presents quantitative findings of the associations between ICTs and the spatiotemporal fragmentation of paid labour. Controlling for various coping strategies, employment and commute factors, household characteristics, lifestyle orientation, time personality and spatial context, statistically significant relations were found between ICTs and the spatiotemporal fragmentation of paid labour for both men and women. The fact that both positive and negative associations were found suggests that ICTs can be adopted to make use of opportunities to arrange paid labour in a flexible way, or as a compensation when such opportunities are lacking. The results also indicate that up to a certain degree these associations are gender specific

With a little help from my friends: social networks and strategies for combining employment and caregiving

Met wat hulp van mijn vrienden: sociale netwerken en strategieën voor het combineren van werk- en zorgtaken De spreiding van functies in steden die wordt gekenmerkt door gescheiden locaties voor wonen, werken en winkelen, vergt de nodige mobiliteit van bewoners om al deze activiteitenlocaties met elkaar te verbinden. Hun dagelijkse activiteiten bestaan voor een aanzienlijk deel uit het overbruggen van de afstanden tussen deze locaties. In de literatuur wordt vaak de belangrijke rol die vrouwen spelen in deze “verbindingsarbeid” onderstreept. Doordat zij vaak (gedeeltelijk) vrijgesteld waren van het verrichten van betaalde arbeid, beschikten zij over de tijd voor deze verbindende activiteiten. De vraag is dan ook hoe men dit, nu ook vrouwen in toenemende mate betaald werk verrichten, nog weet te bolwerken. Vooral ook omdat het aantal te verbinden locaties in dit geval ook toeneemt met een extra werklocatie (namelijk die van de vrouw) en vaak ook diverse locaties voor kinderopvang. Hoewel menig onderzoek verricht is naar de strategieën die dubbelverdieners toepassen om werk-, zorg- en vrijetijdsactiviteiten te combineren, valt dit van een aantal kanttekeningen te voorzien. Zo is het gezien het bovenstaande bijvoorbeeld opmerkelijk dat het leeuwendeel van het onderzoek naar strategieën voor het combineren van werk, zorg en vrije tijd vooral heeft gekeken naar strategieën ten aanzien van de duur, en sporadisch ook de timing van activiteiten, en zijn strategieën die gericht zijn op de locaties waar activiteiten verricht worden grotendeels buiten beschouwing gebleven. Vandaar dat het huidige artikel kijkt naar strategieën aangaande de duur van activiteiten, hun timing én de locatie waar ze worden verricht. Een andere beperking van het tot op heden uitgevoerde onderzoek, is dat hoewel het in steeds grotere mate de interacties tussen gezinsleden in ogenschouw neemt, de rol van mensen buiten het kerngezin zoals grootouders, buren en vrienden, nog vaak onderbelicht blijft. Dit terwijl zij vaak ook een belangrijke bron van hulp zijn bij het verbinden van verschillende activiteitenlocaties (zie bijvoorbeeld de rol van grootouders bij de opvang van kleinkinderen). Het huidige onderzoek tracht dan ook de mate waarin verschillende strategieën voor het combineren van werk en zorg worden toegepast, en waar de keuze voor bepaalde strategieën door bepaald wordt, in kaart te brengen. Is deze keuze afhankelijk van iemands werksituatie, voorkeuren, woonomgeving of sociaaldemografische kenmerken, maar vooral ook: welke rol speelt iemands sociaal netwerk in deze? Mannen en vrouwen blijken aanzienlijk te verschillen in de gehanteerde strategieën. Het sociale netwerk is van invloed op de keuze voor strategieën die zijn gericht op de duur en de locatie van activiteiten

Coordinating everyday life in the Netherlands: a holistic quantitative approach to the analysis of ICT-related and other work-life balance strategies.

Due to women’s increased participation in the labour force, more and more family-households are now juggling paid labour and care-giving in space and time and do so in many different ways. Much research and policy about how households try to establish a satisfactory work-life balance singles out particular coping strategies, such as telecommuting or the mobilizing of informal help by relatives or friends. While insightful, foregrounding single strategies may oversimplify the complex reality of everyday life, in which people often skilfully weave together multiple coping strategies. As well, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have further diversified the arsenal of possible coping strategies, but the academic literature has yet to verify whether ICT usage complements or substitutes the adoption of other coping strategies. Adopting a holistic quantitative approach this study assesses which combinations of coping strategies prevail and which role ICTs play in this regard among oneand dual-earner households in the Utrecht–Amersfoort–Hilversum area of the Netherlands. We also examine systematic variations in strategy combination by socio-demographics, ICT possession, affordability and skills, social network factors, employment and commute factors, spatial factors, lifestyle orientation and other factors. We identify several distinct combinations of strategies and find that ICT-related strategies are frequently adopted by highly educated employed parents in the Netherlands attempting to achieve a satisfying work-life balance and tend to complement other types of strategies. Which combinations of strategies have been adopted depends most strongly on the presence of young children, but also on employment factors and characteristics of the environment surrounding the dwelling and main workplace