[The significance of professional activity for future concepts of the elderly]

Shaping one's own way of life is essentially a matter of planning, in terms of both subject matter and time span. In an experiment involving 100 men and women of pre-pension age, the authors sought to ascertain how much the personality-forming-effects of occupational work bear upon the spheres and dimensions of people's conceptions of their old-age life. The results prove that lifelong learning, the measure of responsibility and the importance attached to one's own vocational career correlate positively with the score and time span of such conceptions.