Pathways to Purpose in the Encore Years

The project has two interconnected aims, one scientific and one programmatic. The scientific aim is to determine the state of the US population with respect to its capacity for purposeful living in the "encore" (post-midlife) years. The programmatic aim is to use this scientific information to enable Encore.org, a major provider of purposeful opportunities for encore-stage individuals, to extend its services to a far broader sector of the population. The project includes three parts. Part 1 is a study using a national survey and in-depth interviews to investigate how Americans with varied histories, values, needs, and opportunities make sense of their lives between midlife and old age, what they wish for, and whether they’re able to realize their aspirations. Key questions are whether and how individuals find purpose in this life stage, the nature and sources of that purpose, and implications for their own wellbeing and their contributions to the wellbeing of others. Part 2 is a data collection effort to create an up-to-date database of existing programs that help people in their later years develop and maintain purposeful lives. Part 3 is an Engagement and Implementation phase, which will bring the insights of Part 1 and the resources identified in Part 2 to the general public and to many different kinds of organizations and programs that support purpose in later life. In doing so, Part 3 will help shift popular conceptions of the encore years and strengthen institutional mechanisms that support many varieties of purposeful aging. The overall project will yield a better understanding of opportunities for and barriers to purpose, engage larger segments of the population with hopeful, purposeful images of aging, and implement strategies to improve the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of programs that support purposeful aging in widely diverse segments of the population.