The Upside of Aging

How Long Life Is Changing the World of Health, Work, Innovation, Policy, and Purpose

Paul Irving

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118691908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

The Upside of Aging: How Long Life Is Changing the World of Health, Work, Innovation, Policy and Purpose explores a titanic shift that will alter every aspect of human existence, from the jobs we hold to the products we buy to the medical care we receive - an aging revolution underway across America and the world. Moving beyond the stereotypes of dependency and decline that have defined older age, The Upside of Aging reveals the vast opportunity and potential of this aging phenomenon, despite significant policy and societal challenges that must be addressed. The book's chapter authors, all prominent thought-leaders, point to a reinvention and reimagination of our older years that have critical implications for people of all ages.

With a positive call to action, the book illuminates the upside for health and wellness, work and volunteerism, economic growth, innovation and education. The authors, like the baby boom generation itself, posit new ways of thinking about aging, as longevity and declining birthrates put the world on track for a mature population of unprecedented size and significance. Among topics they examine are:

• The emotional intelligence and qualities of the aging brain that science is uncovering, "senior moments" notwithstanding.
• The new worlds of genomics, medicine and technology that are revolutionizing health care and wellness.
• The aging population's massive impact on global markets, with enormous profit potential from an explosion in products and services geared toward mature consumers.
• New education paradigms to meet the needs and aspirations of older people, and to capitalize on their talents.
• The benefits that aging workers and entrepreneurs bring to companies, and the crucial role of older people in philanthropy and society.
• Tools and policies to facilitate financial security for longer and more purposeful lives.
• Infrastructure and housing changes to create livable cities for all ages, enabling "aging in place" and continuing civic contribution from millions of older adults.
• The opportunities and potential for intergenerational engagement and collaboration.

The Upside of Aging defines a future that differs profoundly from the retirement dreams of our parents and grandparents, one that holds promise and power and bears the stamp of a generation that has changed every stage of life through which it has moved.

Part One


OPPORTUNITIES AND INNOVATIONS

Aging is not lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

—Betty Friedan

Chapter 1
Our Aging Population—It May Just Save Us All

Laura L. Carstensen

Director, Stanford Center on Longevity; Professor of Psychology and Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy, Stanford University

For the first time ever, a growing resource populates the world—millions of mature people. They are better educated and healthier than prior generations of older people, motivated to make a difference, and knowledgeable and emotionally stable enough to do so.

Emotional stability improves with age. Knowledge grows. Expertise deepens. The brain actually improves in many ways. I was making this case to my dad a while back, about the many positive changes that accompany advanced age, changes that go widely unrecognized in a society centered around the glories of youth. Given the typical characteristics of aging, I said, the presence of millions of older citizens could improve the world significantly.

Not that I needed to convince my father of any of this. He was 92 at the time. His reaction: “Maybe we need to stop talking only about how to save the old folks, and start talking about how they may save us all.”

What my father knew, and I also had learned, was that aging has an upside, and that the current aging demographic has much to offer society. For the first time ever, a growing resource populates the world—millions of mature people. They are better educated and healthier than prior generations of older people, motivated to make a difference and knowledgeable and emotionally stable enough to do so. At the same time that we invest in solutions for the very real problems older people face, we must identify and embrace these characteristics and developmental trends that show improvement with age.

A key challenge in the early twenty-first century is to build an infrastructure that taps the important areas of individual growth that improve with age—emotional stability, knowledge, and expertise—for the good of society.

The conversation with my dad about aging actually began some 40 years ago. He was in his fifties, as I am today. I was hospitalized for many weeks, after sustaining multiple broken bones in a car accident, and most of my fellow patients were old women. Orthopedic wards tend to have many older patients, the result of falls and broken bones.

As my pain subsided and boredom set in, my dad, a distinguished researcher and professor at the University of Rochester, suggested that I take a college course. I chose Introductory Psychology, and he offered to attend and tape the classes. He sat in on every lecture and brought the tapes to the hospital. (Little did I know that psychology would one day be my disciplinary expertise. And the fact that older women patients surrounded me as I first delved deeply into human behavior no doubt spurred my interest in aging.)

Despite the fact that my dad at the time was running a large research laboratory filled with graduate students and post-docs, he found time to take an introductory college course purely to benefit his daughter. He is an exceptional man; do not think for a minute that I am suggesting he is typical of any group, old or young. But the tendency with age to prioritize things and people who matter most is typical. Moreover, he had reached a stage in life where he had the knowledge and resources to know how to help. The fact that he didn’t fall apart emotionally, but felt deeply moved by my situation, also is relevant to what we have learned about the aging brain.

I was trained in both life-span developmental and clinical psychology. Psychological aging offers an excellent example of the gains and losses that occur with age. Most people worry about their aging minds as much (or even more) than their aging bodies. Such fears are not unfounded.

There also are gains, however, and social norms are likely a bigger issue than the physical and mental changes that come with age. For most of that 30-year stretch we label “old age,” most people in the United States and the developed world function very well. They live in their homes, and participate in family and community life. They increasingly work, if often part-time. Though there are problems with old age, and the last year or so of life is pretty bleak for many people, that bleakness characterizes the end of life, not old age per se.

Overall, absent significant brain disease, the gains that come with age can functionally offset the declines that typically occur. Indeed, these gains present us with an upside, a resource never before available in human history—tens of millions of older people who are knowledgeable about practical matters of life, who have reared and launched their children, and who care increasingly about investing their time in things that really matter.

Longevity Is Here to Stay

Fears about aging are inherently ironic. Through most of human evolution, life was barely long enough to ensure survival of the species. “Nasty, brutish, and short,” is how the seventeenth-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes described life. Even by 1900, a quarter of babies died before they reached the age of five. Death was common at all ages. Of the babies who survived to 18 years, 20 percent were orphaned in the process.

Women routinely died in childbirth. Romanticized images of multiple generations living together on the homestead were hardly the norm; rather they were exceptions to the rule. The life expectancy at the dawn of the twentieth century was 47 years.

Then, in a single century, we nearly doubled the length of the lives we live, adding almost 30 years to life expectancy for the average person between 1900 and 1999. The increase was spurred by massive cultural shifts that were rooted in medical science and agricultural technologies, large-scale changes that improved sanitation and prevented the spread of disease.

Today, the majority of infants born in the developed world can expect to live into old age. In coming years, families will routinely include four and five generations. Growing old has its share of problems, to be sure, but the opportunity to grow old is very new.

As lives were extended, families had fewer children. The combination of these two phenomena starkly reconfigured population demographics and created aging societies. If people had begun to live longer but fertility had remained high, we wouldn’t have aging societies today. The consequences of this aging pattern are clear and enduring, not just a short-term function of the baby boomers aging. The fact that the vast majority of babies born will reach 65 and beyond ensures that the age distribution is here to stay.¹ Short of global plagues that target only the elderly—science fiction–like possibilities—there is every reason to think that these demographic changes will remain into the foreseeable future.²

The numbers in Figure 1.1 are for the United States, a youngster when compared to our European counterparts. Western Europeans live longer and have lower fertility rates than Americans. Japan has experienced even starker changes in longevity and fertility, with the longest life expectancies in the world and fertility below replacement levels. One in five Japanese already is over 65.

Figure 1.1 World Population by Age and Sex: 1950, 2050 (Projected)

Source: UN World Population Prospects, 2012 Revision.

The fertility declines in the West are expanding to include the developing world, with countries like Brazil, India, and China now aging at an even faster rate than the developed world aged in the last century.

The Future of Aging Societies

In looking at societal aging, I often feel that there are two voices in the public discourse, the doomsayers and the romanticists. The doomsayers are the loudest. They use phrases like the “failure of success” and “gray dawn” to describe older societies. They worry that older societies will be unproductive. They say that large numbers of older citizens will break the bank, create intergenerational strife, and leave children in the dust. We hear their voices regularly on TV news and read their opinions in the newspapers.

The romanticists, on the other hand, equate aging with “sage-ing.” They are less prominent in public discourse, but passionate. They depict older people as spending their days pondering life and seeking joy and peace.

The truth, as I see it, lies somewhere in the middle. We should not lightly dismiss those forecasting doom. Golda Meier is famously quoted as saying, “Being seventy is not a sin. It’s not a joke either.” She was, of course, right. In truth, growing old isn’t easy on bodies or minds.

By very advanced age, arthritis, osteoporosis, and hypertension are normative. Muscle strength declines; falls are more common; eyesight, balance, and hearing suffer. Dementia risk doubles with every five years after 65. And because aging occurs in every cell in the body, the older we get, the more likely w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One Opportunities and Innovations
• Part Two A Changing Landscape
• Part Three Perspectives and Possibilities
• Epigraph
• About the Editor
• About the Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement