{"id":1352,"date":"2014-07-07T14:20:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T14:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/families\/?p=80"},"modified":"2014-07-07T14:20:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T14:20:36","slug":"how-should-we-think-about-longer-lives-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2014\/07\/07\/how-should-we-think-about-longer-lives-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"How should we think about longer lives–and why?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ashton<\/a>
Ashton Applewhite hosts *This Chair Rocks.* Image by Clipper (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>June 30th<\/sup> saw the release of the 65+ in the United States 2010 U.S. Census Bureau Report<\/a>, the latest overview of how older Americans are faring socially and economically. Brace yourself: \u201cthe U.S. population is poised to experience a population aging boom over the next two decades.\u201d Uh oh, right? Despite the fact that longer lives reflect a remarkable public health achievement\u2014the redistribution of death from the young to the old\u2014there\u2019s more hand-wringing than back-patting going on.<\/p>\n

Much of the apprehension centers on the \u201cdependency ratio\u201d: the fact that the number of people over 65 is growing and the number of people the workforce shrinking. Fiscal crisis! Social collapse! In fact that ratio\u2019s been falling pretty steadily for over a century. Over the same period national GDPs, along with lifespans, have rapidly increased<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t turn into economic dead weights when they hit 65. As the Census Report documents, they\u2019re participating in the labor force in ever-greater numbers. It also notes that \u201cthe dependency ratio does not account for older or younger people who work or have financial resources, nor does it capture those in their \u2018working ages\u2019 who are not working,\u201d and that many caregivers are over age 65<\/a>. Because it\u2019s unpaid, this work is omitted from our national accounting. Millions more older Americans would like to continue to contribute, but are prevented by age discrimination in the workplace<\/a>, which relegates them to jobs that don\u2019t take advantage of their skills and experience\u2014if they land one at all.<\/p>\n

The \u201capproaching crisis in caregiving\u201d that the Census Report calls out is real and growing more acute. But people are healthier as well as longer-lived, and are not an inevitable sink for healthcare dollars<\/a>. According to the ten-year MacArthur Foundation Study of Aging in America, once people reach 65, their added years don\u2019t have a major impact on Medicare costs. As the Census Report details, the number of Americans aged 65+ in nursing homes declined by 20 percent in the last decade, \u201cfrom 4.6 percent in 2000 to 3.1 percent in 2010.\u201d That\u2019s three percent <\/em>of Americans over 65.Chronic conditions pile up, but they don\u2019t keep most older Americans from functioning in the world, helping their neighbors, and enjoying their lives.<\/p>\n

The Census Report includes an oft-cited statistic: \u201cAn unprecedented shift will occur between 2015 and 2020, when the percentage of people aged 65 and over in the global population will surpass the percentage of the very young (aged 0-4) for the first time.\u201d This means that by 2020 there\u2019ll be one older adult for every child\u2014far better for children\u2019s welfare than the inverse, as well as for the women who once had to produce enough of them to survive famines, wars, and epidemics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also helpful to keep in mind that the projections that have Americans so worked up are largely the result of a specific historical phenomenon: the cohort effect of the baby boom growing old\u2014the proverbial bulge in the python. This effect will peak by midcentury, although, tellingly, few graphs extend far enough out to show the downturn. Much was made of the first boomers turning 65 in 2011, but a 2013 milestone went largely unremarked. That\u2019s when millennials first outnumbered baby boomers<\/a>. The number of boomers will continue to decline.<\/p>\n

Even countries that are rapidly aging can produce \u201cyouth bulges”, as demographer Philip Longman pointed out<\/a> in 2010, describing them as looming disasters \u201cwith all the attendant social consequences, from more violence to economic dislocation.\u201d Can’t win for losing. In that same Foreign Policy <\/em>article<\/a> Longman warned of a \u201c\u2019gray tsunami\u2019<\/a> sweeping the planet.\u201d Journalists jumped on this frankly terrifying metaphor, and \u201cgray tsunami\u201d has since become widely adopted shorthand for the socioeconomic threat posed by an aging population.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re facing is no tsunami. It\u2019s a demographic wave that scientists have been tracking for decades, and it\u2019s washing over a flood plain, not crashing without warning on a defenseless shore. This ageist and alarmist rhetoric justifies prejudice against older people, legitimates their abandonment, and fans the flames of intergenerational conflict. If left unchallenged, ageism will pit us against each other like racism and sexism; it will rob us of an immense accrual of knowledge and experience; and it will poison our response to the remarkable achievement of longer, healthier lives.<\/p>\n

Ashton Applewhite<\/em><\/a> blogs at This Chair Rocks<\/a> where she also frequently updates her page Yo, Is This Ageist?<\/a><\/em> Reach her on twitter at @thischairrocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 30th saw the release of the 65+ in the United States 2010 U.S. Census Bureau Report, the latest overview of how older Americans are faring socially and economically. Brace yourself: \u201cthe U.S. population is poised to experience a population aging boom over the next two decades.\u201d Uh oh, right? Despite the fact that longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[211,135,8959,988],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aging","tag-demography","tag-families","tag-health-care"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}