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Please read the text and check for handouts before continuing. Lectures are designed to amplify certain topics, add to your perspective, and indicate topics you should focus on (and sometimes topics you can ignore). 

Lets start our discovery of the psychology of aging with a theory that tries to explain the status of Older Adults in America, then we can talk about growing old in America.

Aging has not always been seen by youth as a negative aspect of life.  In fact, at one time, elders held all the property and knowledge that was needed by young adults to survive, prosper, and raise their families. They needed the more experienced, older person to teach them a trade and to deed their land to them when they died. The following theory tries to explain the decline in the status of the elderly that starts with the onset of industrialization (If you don't know what industrialization is, Google it).

You will need Real Player to play this audio file: http://www.real.com/realone/index.html?src=downloadr 

Historically, the social status among Americans was related to property ownership (you might remember from your history classes that only property owners could vote in the early days of our country) . The cultural norm (what society viewed as correct behavior at the time) was that children provided care for their infirmed elders in exchange for inheritance of the elders' property. Modernization or industrialization  some believe led to the decline in the status of the elderly.

First click here   Modernization Theory   to follow the lecture with a visual aide.  Then start the audio below

 

Click here for Audio Presentation
Text for the hearing impaired is below

 

1. Early American economics were based on the "barter" system. Little or no cash is needed in this method of exchange. 
   
2. The elderly hold title to property and knowledge of family business that younger people need for economic survival.
   
3. At the turn of the century, industrialization begins and the barter system is replaced with the cash system.
   
4. America's youth are no longer dependent on older adults for livelihood. They leave family-owned businesses and go to the city to work for cash. Industrialization freed young people from the historical dependence on both their parents and their parents' land.
   
5. In the year 1900, more than half of all seniors over age 65 were poor.
   
6. Only 15% had enough money to retire, and the average age they did was age 62, (but remember, at that time, the average life expectancy was just 47 or 48 years).
   
7. Some (15% ) were taken in by their families, but three to five percent were forced into the poor houses, or Almshouses as they were called. Traditionally, these poor houses were full of shiftless youth and immigrants who could not find work.
   
8. By the 1930’s, widespread income problems among older people had caused a buildup of public opinion in favor of compulsory retirement pensions. Social Security was instituted. 

1. So now, how many of you want to get old? How many of you want instead to die young? What are the rest of you planning on doing?

Put into perspective, aging doesn't seem so bad. There's an old saying "Don't complain about getting old, some people are denied the privilege" (unknown).

Within 40 years the population of the world will include over one billion people 60 years of age or older--there is a rapidly expanding world population of older adults.  But not to worry, as you will see there really are lots of younger people to replace them. I know, you have heard otherwise and for 10 years it is true, the population did decrease. But after that there was a huge boom again. We will learn more about that later on in the course.

Gerontology is the study of social and human aging which views the elderly as a special population.  Actually, it is the study of adulthood (from maturity to old age).  Gerontology is an expanding discipline, and it will continue to offer career and service opportunities to growing numbers of individuals who become interested in answering the questions and addressing the problems of a rapidly aging population.

2. Why Study Aging? Reasons to study aging fall into at least 3 categories:

1. Physicians and nurses and other health delivery services personnel are more likely to deal with aged patients than with any other age group. Geriatrics is becoming an increasingly important specialty in health care.
   
2. Adult education is one of the few domains in which the  "educational" field is growing because of the return of older adults to the classroom.  Teachers are being asked to have training in the different methods needed to educate  adults and the elderly more effectively.
   
3. Counselors and therapists are being met with increasing demands for knowledge about the aging process from an aging population.  Particularly as the more highly educated, middle-aged cohorts attain older adulthood.
   
4. As a significant segment of consumers, the aged are of consequence to business as well. Knowledge of aging is sought for developing and marketing new products targeted for the aged. For example:

1) According to NY fashion connoisseur May Peacock, one group has begun to take the measurements of women over 50 in order to propose, to the clothing industry, a new category of apparel sizes aimed at women aged 55 and over.

2) Women's apparel sizing standard hasn't been updated since 1970 and that was based on body measurements of army women in the 1940's. The American frame has grown in size since these standards were set. 

3) A survey funded by Levi Strauss and McCall Pattern Co. resulted in a long-overdue acknowledgement that we're a special and different breed than we were at the turn of the century. 

5. Gerontology (different from geriatrics) is a relevant discipline to almost any professional specialization and it is also a field which provides a significant number of careers in and of itself. Can you think of any field that will not be impacted by the rapidly growing aging population? IF you do tell us at the discussion board.

 

Be sure to check   Careers in Aging at http://www.aghe.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=40634&PID=677866
and http://www.careersinaging.com/careersinaging/finding_your_job.htm

3. Social Reasons

1. The aged have become such a major segment of the population that they simply can no longer be ignored.

At the turn of the century, the aged comprised only 4% of the United States population,  and the life expectancy was 47 years.  Given the urgency of other health and social issues of the time, aging was the least of the concerns for social planners.

2. In the U.S., half of the population born today can expect to live 75 years. In the last 100 years, the population increased 5 times, but the over age 65 increased 15 times. 

Did you Know?
Each day  in America 5000 people celebrate their 65th birthday. Each day in America 3400 people over the age of 65 die. Leaving a net increase, each day, of 1600 people over the age of 65 ? 

  Visual representation of the growth of the older population.    

III. Importance of the Data

1. The over age 85 segment of the elderly population is the fastest growing . This is important to know because as one ages the amount of personal assistance needed with everyday activities increases. You will learn in this class that aging and illness are not the same (as I will mention many times aging is not a disease). People who age successfully (successful aging)  remain active, engaged and in the community until the last year of their lives.
    
2. This is what optimal, robust or successful aging strives for (terms you will hear interchangeably in this course). Anything less is abnormal. As mentioned above, we may require more help as we age, but those who are sick (abnormal aging) are not to be confused with usual aging. We see people in nursing homes and think all older people end up in nursing homes. You will see later in this class that just 3-5% of elders live long-term in nursing homes.

Refer to your electronic handout Functional Limitations By Age.  Notice the differences between the needs of those aged 65 and those aged 85 . After age 85, nearly 3/4 of all older people need help with housework, over 1/2 need assistance with walking, getting out of doors and shopping. More than 1/4 need help with managing their money, bathing and showering. 

3. Second, the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease is approximately 25 times greater for ages 85 and over. These elderly require more complicated care, but respite care for their caregivers is even more important since many caregivers suffer stress related illnesses due to long-term care giving and can actually die before the person they are caring for because of this stress. 
   
   
   Strain of caring for elderly  http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/sec23/ch344/ch344b.html
   
4. The population group ages 50-64 (the Boomers)  have historically provided 80-90% of long term care services in the family home (and you thought they all entered nursing homes). This means that 80-90% of all older people are in the community, not in nursing homes. The boomers are now entering their senior years. Because they had fewer children, the number of potential or available family members to function as caregivers has decreased. Many wonder if we are headed for a caregiver crisis.
   
5. Some say aging is a woman's issues because women live longer. Hormones, lifestyle, and social status are said to contribute to a white woman's average life expectancy of nearly 80 years  (compared to a white man's average of 73 years). Yet, this gap is closing as women participate in more risk-taking professions, such as law enforcement, fire protection or combat. The average life expectancy is 77 years (to calculate the average add 80 plus 73, divided by two.

 

Do you know what the average life expectancy is for a black man in America ? It's nearly 6 years less in the United States than for a white man. Not because of genetics or other health factors, but because of the early death of young black men. http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/18/blacks-die-earlier-from-homicide-heart-disease/

Woman are overwhelmingly the care givers in life. They care for their families, their grandchildren, and their aging parents and spouse. Many did not earn Social Security or retirement benefits from their care giving roles (thus they have fewer income resources when they retire).   When a women worked outside the home, it was often in lower paying jobs when compared to men in similar positions. 

The implications for individuals centers around how, in old age, they will fund their retirement. With lower wages, there was not only less opportunity to save for retirement, but a lower likelihood of having a company retirement plan, or Social Security.  And, because of increased longevity, many older women who had adequate retirement funds, outlive their resources.  Especially tragic is the minority woman who has been at a disadvantage because of limited employment opportunities that usually included domestic or service jobs that were low pay and without retirement benefits, and often being paid under the table.

3. Finally, the reason gerontological data is important is because our laws still favor institutional care--a costly alternative ($8,000 to $10,000. per month or more) to home or family assisted care (often $3,500- $4,500 per month (2008 figures). Remember, Medicare does not pay for long- term institutionalized care except in cases of short stay rehabilitation ( often a 21 day maximum after a hospitalization).  Longer average life expectancies raise serious questions about an individual's ability to pay for care (many will require many more years of care). Still, families and loved ones are under the impression that Medicare will pay for long-term care-- it does not. 

IV.  What Caused this "Age Wave?"

1. Whether you are 2, 55, or 70, the Age Wave will change your life in ways you might now find hard to imagine. Three separate and unprecedented demographic phenomena are converging to produce the coming Age Wave:
   ( hint:  items highlighted in blue might appear on exams)
   

1. Increased Longevity and The Senior Boom 
   More Americans are living longer than ever before, and older Americans are healthier, more active, more vigorous and more influential than any other older generation in history. It's not that, historically, people did not live to be old, but just not so many of them.

 

1. During the first seven centuries (after 1200 A.D.), life expectancy was just 30-45 years. Now it is nearly 80. In the decades since 1900, we have added 28 years to the average life expectancy in this country. Advances in medical technology, immunizations, antibiotics, public health (like flush toilets), food safety and a reduction in industrial accidents all contributed to this increase in the  average life expectancy or longevity of older adults. 
   
2.  But the first generations of long-lived humans have already arrived: 2/3's of all the men and women who have lived beyond the age of 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today.
   
3. With continuing improvements in life-style, nutrition, and medical technology, the numbers of American's over the age of  65 are likely to approach 45 million, representing as much as 1/5th of the total population.
   
4. This generation of elders is bolder, wealthier, more powerful, more  savvy in the marketplace, more socially outspoken and more politically  forceful than any previous generations of elders on the earth.
   
5. There have been baby booms before, but there has never been a senior  boom.

2. Decreased Birth Rates or The Birth Dearth

Many experts predicted that the baby boom generation would cause a sharp upward swing in birth rates, but this so called echo effect came late. The boom generation (1946-1964) is actually divided into early boomers and late boomers. Early Boomers lagged behind previous generations in childbirths- At ages 30,40 & 50's  many became  first-time parents.

Many of the first wave of Baby Boomers born before 1957 (20%) choose not to have children at all, and another 25% have had just one child per couple. The great population for these elders is not being offset by an explosion of children. This increases the average age of the population.

There are several reasons for this: higher divorce rate, more  women in the work force, and the expense of raising a child.

After 1976 there was again another birth explosion, but more about that later.

1. We've heard a lot about "Boom II," "the Boomlet" or "yuppie  puppies," but the rise in the number of babies in recent years is due  entirely to the enormous number of women of childbearing age and has not offset the number of elders. But they are coming. Referred to as the Eco Effect or the Net Generation born from 1977-1997 there are nearly 81 million of them. And if you recall there were 77 million Boomers. Tapscot, Growing Up Digital, The Rise of the Net Generation, 1998
   

Did you Know? 
 Check out your handout " Changing Pattern of Mortality in the United States"

At the turn of the century, we died at home of acute or infectious diseases (like tuberculosis, chronic stomach (gastritis) or kidney (nephritis) infections and diphtheria). They were short-lived diseases. One either got better or died in a short amount of time. We now have treatments for these acute illnesses. 

Lifestyle and unhealthy living are now one of the main obstacles in increasing longevity. Looking at your chart you can see that today we die of heart disease, cancer (neoplasms), and strokes (vascular lesions). These are more long-term or chronic  illnesses, and the cures are unknown.   If medicine could find a cure for these diseases, average life expectancy would again jump. 

 

3. The Aging of the Baby Boomers: 

The third cause of the age wave is caused by the Boomers.  One-third (1/3) of all Americans (77 million people) were born between 1946 and  1964. The boom generation has enormously influenced life on the rest  of the planet.

At each stage of their lives, the needs and desires of the boomers  have become the dominant concerns of American business and popular  culture.

1. When boomers arrived, the diaper industry prospered, then baby  shoes, the photo industries, and products and services needed for small children. 
   
2. When they suffered scraped knees and runny noses, a massive  pediatric medical establishment arose along with Dr Spock.
   
3. Elementary schools were built, TV shows for and about kids developed (Mickey  Mouse Club, Captain Kangaroo, Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons).
    
4. We  became a child-focused nation. As teens they demanded soft drinks, movies, cosmetics, records.  They gave rise to McDonalds, Burger King, and The Gap.
   
5. As adults they gave rise to the self-help industry (I'm OK- You're  OK, Erroneous Zones, and What Color is your Parachute?).
   
6. The leading edge of the Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1957) has now passed age 60. As the boomers approach retirement, their numbers will combine with the other two great demographic changes to produce a historic shift in public concerns, social structure and the life style of America.

Can you name the three causes of the age wave? If not, go back and re-read "What Caused This Age Wave" .

The Baby Boom was replaced by a baby bust. The era of the U.S.  as a youth-focused nation will come to an end for a short while.  What will take its place is a nation increasingly concerned with the needs and desires of its  middle-aged and older citizens.

As the Boomers grow older, they will continue to dominate the culture. When a few thousand people across the country share an opinion, read a book, buy a product, that's interesting; it may even amount to a trend. But, when 77 million people do so, it's a revolution.

Increased longevity (the senior boom), decreased birth rates or the birth dearth, and the large numbers of aging baby boomers are coming together to create a massive demographic shift. 

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4. This is a good point to clarify the differences between life-span terms.

Absolute Life Span
Refers to the inherent biological limit that is characteristic of every species. When these cells are looked at in lab studies, they  only replicate a certain number of times and then stop.

For humans the genetic clock has not changed for more than 10,000 years.  According to this theory each species has their own clock

Maximum Life Span (sometimes referred to as maximum life expectancy)
This refers to the maximum years one has ever lived (past the absolute).  Currently that is 122 years as you will read later.

Average Life Span (also known by your author as average life expectancy)
The average life span is calculated by adding together all the ages of a group of people then dividing by the number of people. We will do this later on in the class. The average life span is what is increasing. A person born today has an average life expectancy of about 80 years. During the beginning of the last century, it was just around 50 years.

Don't be mislead into thinking that humans have never lived to be old. Humans have lived past 100 years since the beginning of time, just not so many of them.
 

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To see what's coming, visit https://www.census.gov/population/international/files/97agewc.pdf

These  pyramids represent a shift in the dependency ratio, the  proportion of workers to non-workers. Some say it represents those who receive assistance and those who support them. Notice what is happening to the shape of the pyramid? The base (representing the younger population) is getting smaller and the tip (representing the elderly)  is getting larger. 

The numbers themselves will peak  early in this century as the Boomers reach their 50s, 60s and 70s.

But the shift in the nation's attitudes toward aging--the "social revolution" that the Age Wave brings has already begin to rumble and quake long before the first boomer turns 65.

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Congratulations! You have completed the lecture materials for week two. This was an unusually long lecture.

Now, go to the Assignment link and complete this week's web discussion assignment . The link to the Assignment Page is at the top of this page.  Don't forget to respond to your colleagues postings, too. You must post on two different days to receive full credit for the week.

If you have surfed the site, you should begin to see the rhythm of the course. Don't forget to e-mail me if you are having difficulty or have questions.

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