Buying into Ageism Comes at A Cost – Whatever Your Age
As prejudices go, ageism is remarkably open-minded. Sooner or later, everyone is eligible to be its victim.
Now, a growing body of medical research suggests that ageism starts exacting its costly toll earlier than assumed. In short, how people feel about aging – that of others and their own -- when they are young can affect their own health outcomes later in life. Put another way, buying into ageism and stereotypes on aging can diminish your health and shorten your life – just as holding generally positive attitudes on aging can deliver quantifiable benefits.
The research, conducted at the Yale School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found “older persons with positive age stereotypes were 44% more likely to fully recover from severe disability than those with negative age stereotypes.”
A longer-term study, published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), followed people for nearly four decades underscores the idea that the attitudes you have about aging as a young person can have a significant bearing, years later, on your health as an older person. That research, via the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, found that younger people who subscribed to negative stereotypes about aging were significantly more likely to experience a “cardiovascular event” (read: heart attack or stroke) over the next 30-plus years. Additionally, those with more negative age stereotypes demonstrated significantly worse memory performance later in life than those with less negative age stereotypes.
Health-Wealth-Self
And ageism exacts other tolls that while more difficult to measure quantitatively, play out in lots of real-world ways – none of them good. It often goes something like this: when ageism takes root, and negative stereotypes about aging are embraced, people (many of whom have another 30-plus years of living to do) tend to “check out” and not think about, let alone act upon, the health, financial and personal matters that will shape their (still lengthy) life. In short, life goes on, even if your head is in the sand.
Few issues could be more mainstream or be relevant to more people. US Census Bureau Statistics reveal that 10,000 people in the U.S. turn 65 every day and that it will continue to happen – every day – from now until 2030. The second fastest growing segment of the US population? People 85 and older. Clearly, the value of putting an end to ageism -- and its pointless, deleterious and, we now know, costly effects – goes way beyond the feel good and aspirational. This is a significant public health and public finance issue.
Disrupt Aging
With that in mind, the emerging Disrupt Aging movement seeks to help reframe the way society thinks and talks about aging. Somewhat uniquely, though, Disrupt Aging is not about political correctness or getting some undefined set of “other people” to change their views. On the contrary, Disrupt Aging often starts with the self and “owning” one’s age.
As I’ve said before, forget about “50 is the new 30!” and “60 is the new 40!” and all those other well-meaning (but missing-the-point) bromides. Fifty is 50, 60 is 60, 70 is 70 and they are -- or can be -- great, and now we’re learning that there’s a much better chance of them being great for you at 50/60/70 if you also thought that at 20/30/40.
Call it a new dimension to the power of positive thinking.
About the author:
Jo Ann Jenkins is CEO of AARP. Ms. Jenkins's debut book, Disrupt Aging, is published by NYC-based Public Affairs – info here: https://www.aarp.org/disrupt-aging/info-2016/joann-jenkins-disrupt-aging-book.html
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6 年The Life Reimagined campaign is AMAZING! I'm curious what AARP has in mind to combat ageism in medicine, particularly since many doctors are over 50. While it is great to feel great & be positive at every age, when health issues arise, it's certainly aggravating to have 8/10 doctors attribute 80% of health issues to "at your age" while proffering no useful advice, let alone show genuine interest in your unusual, early onset, or rare health issue. Let's get Drs out of the ageism habit too!
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8 年Good work .Jo ann I am more than impressed .
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8 年First of all, one has to think that this is a labor participation issue. Labor participation, or even labor needs (re: automation) are decreasing; so the discussion is which group would be affected more by that. Second, you can do a lot about this trend, if it exists. So first of all AARP’s cutoff age implicitly creates a mindset of 50 being the age of retirement when many people are perfectly active to late sixties. This may be creating a labeling obstacle and a mindset for some. It’s like if there would be an organization for persons with families setting the qualifying age limit at 18, 21, 25 or 30 or on other conditions such as when they marry? or when they have kids? This would signal to the society what’s the “expected age” to start a family, or other “expected” norms etc etc. (not judging that now). In Europe for example retiring age is generally considered the 65 (retiring before that is considered premature and there's a lot of push against that by social security systems) not to mention the discussion on whether retirement should be pushed to 67 or more due to change in health standards (not discussing this now though). Third, AARP has a lot of revenues and members with accumulated wealth. Why not setting up a crowdfunding/VC/PE platform that would invest in companies hiring “seniors”? See an example here: https://nypost.com/2016/06/20/forget-millennials-this-company-is-hiring-old-interns/ This may even accelerate through that the exchange of experiences with younger workers. This can also provide return for the retired (Title3 of the JOBS act gives this investment option). Apologies if you’ve already thought about/doing this. If not, some of the people here can provide ideas if interested.
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8 年Ageism is alive and unfortunately well entrenched especially in healthcare. I was hospitalized on my birthday when I turned 60. As an identifier, each person I saw that day asked my birthdate. As soon as they calculated my age each person started speaking more loudly to me. Not one or two but all of the people that cared for me from the pca to nurses and doctors. How incredibly insulting!