Retirement and continuity: active labor of elderly adults in formosa’s agricultural sector based on the agricultural censuses (2002 and 2018)

Abstract

This study analyzes the labor participation of elderly adults (65 years and over) in the Argentine agricultural sector, with particular emphasis on the province of Formosa, based on data from the National Agricultural Censuses of 2002 and 2018. The objective is to examine the continuity of work in old age within agricultural holdings and to understand how the role of elderly adults has been reconfigured in the context of recent productive transformations. Through a comparative analysis of both censuses, the study seeks to identify changes in agrarian structure and in the participation of this age group within rural production units. The findings reveal an overall reduction in the number of agricultural holdings and a reconfiguration of the role of elderly adults within them. Far from constituting an inactive population, these workers continue to perform advisory, caregiving, knowledge transmission, and family management functions, thereby emerging as key actors in the social and productive sustainability of rural areas. In the case of Formosa, these results highlight the persistence of work in old age as part of family strategies for social reproduction, in a context marked by processes of deagrarianization and changes in productive structure.