In Brief
By Andy Humm
Back to the Future: Boomers Enter Sixties
On New Year’s Day of this year the first of 3.4 million American baby boomers born in 1946 – “the fruit of demobilization,” the Washington Post called them – turned 60 years old. Jerry Adler in Newsweek has dubbed the now graying crop the “abbies” for aging baby boomers.
Among the class of ’46 are Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. About 600,000 have passed away. Life expectancy for those reaching 60 this year is 82.3, but most “think they’re going to die before they get old,” a Yankelovich study found. Others think they’re never going to die.
Before the Greatest Generation stopped overproducing kids there were 78 million new Americans.
The Arizona Star, which calls the postwar population bulge a “sonic boom, of sorts,” says that these millions impelled “the dandelion-like sprouting of Walgreens and CVS stores throughout the paved world,” only to be followed by a “second wave” of people buying stuff for their kids, and now for their grandkids.
The collective spending power of the boomers is two trillion dollars a year.
The other side of the coin is the impending strain on the health-care system, Medicare, Social Security, and other retirement benefits. Those are longer stories, some of them in these pages from month to month.
Over-55 and Online
A new BURST! Media study of Americans 55 and over found that this age group’s use of the Internet increased by more than 20 percent in the past year, making them the fastest growing demographic online. More than 27 million senior Americans used the Internet in 2005, with 61 percent of them reporting that they used it more than they did in the previous year.
The top two reasons they go online are for “accessibility” and “accuracy” of information that they don’t think they’re getting from such regular media as newspapers and television.
Route 66
With more than 71 million Americans projected to be over 65 by 2030, automobile manufacturers are taking steps to make their products more user-friendly with such features as wider seats, heated seats, more back support, and swivel seats that make it easier to get in and out of a vehicle. Automotive Body Repair News also looks forward to gauges that are easier to read and louder warning systems – even while warning against the kind of sensory overload that would stress out an older driver.
PDAs Here, Have No Fear
While most 21st-century gadgets from cell phones to iPods target younger age groups, a recent study finds that older people are just as capable of learning how to use one of the more challenging devices, the personal digital assistant (PDA), or hand-held computer.
A group of 44 people ages 56 to 89 were given three three-hour training sessions in how to use PDAs, with one-quarter of them developing mastery of the tool and 50 percent emerging able to operate its standard programs. More than half of the batch went on to use a PDA to remind them to take their medications.
“Training success was not related to age,” Dr. Anthony Sterns, director of the study, told ICA Research Review.
Sisters, Have a Sip
Not to encourage alcohol abuse, but a new study out of Holland has found that “[d]rinking moderate amounts of alcohol appears to protect older women from developing type 2...diabetes,” the Daily Times of Pakistan reports.
The possibility has been noted before, but those studies focused on men, even though most type 2 diabetics are women.
The new research, as described in the journal Diabetes Care, looked at 16,300 women from 49 to 70 who did not have diabetes when they signed up, and tracked them for more than six years.
Of this number, in that length of time, 760 women developed type 2 diabetes, but those who drank moderately, i.e., from 5 to 30 grams of alcohol a week — three or less average drinks — were significantly less likely to develop the disease. Heavy drinkers and non-drinkers alike were more prone to type 2 diabetes.
Depression in Disguise
Twenty percent of people 65-plus in this country suffer from depression, yet this is the least likely group to get adequate treatment. Barry Lebowitz of the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland, warns that beyond the risk of suicide, old people “can be so debilitated by depression that they are not managing their hypertension or diabetes or they are not eating right.”
Depressed older adults often fail to seek medical attention for the problem, or it is missed by their physicians and family members.
A range of drugs can assuage the melancholy, but older people – who disproportionately take their own lives – need support systems to make sure they take their medication.
Non-drug treatments that can help include getting out more and being involved with other people as well as better diet and exercise regimens.
Radical Prostatectomy
Okay After 70
Against the conventional medical wisdom that age 70 should be the cutoff for a radical prostatectomy, a study by the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute has found that, in the words of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “the absolute risk of death was low even among men ages 70 to 79; [only] 0.66 percent of men in this age group died within 30 days of surgery.” A better predictor of complications was not age, but a history of heart disease or stroke.
The researchers recommended that the upper age for the operation be pushed to 79.
Letting Older Prisoners Go
Most of this nation’s states vastly increased their prison populations in the past two decades. Michigan’s went from 15,000 to 49,300 in 25 years. Prisoners over the age of 60 have increased by 62 percent in Michigan in the past six years and now constitute 13 percent of that states inmates.
Correctional administrators are now realizing that one of the antidotes to overcrowding is the release of older inmates, who are on the whole less likely to commit further crimes and are considered what the Detroit News calls “a safe bet,” The U.S. Department of Justice found in 1990 that only 2 percent of parolees over 55 returned to prison as against 22 percent of those aged 18 to 24.
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School told the newspaper that advancing age is the best indicator of low recidivism. Working with law students, he has won the release of 100 aging inmates in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, none of whom has been returned to prison.
Because of health-care costs, older prisoners across the nation cost more to incarcerate – $69,000 a year versus $22,000 for a younger one.
Women: Eat Those Antioxidants
The Journal of Nutrition says that intake of selenium and cartenoids, substances rich in antioxidants and present in many foods, “may thwart inflammation-driven diseases leading to fatality in the aged.” A Johns Hopkins/University of Pennsylvania study looked at the effects of these substances on older women and found a lower risk of death in those with higher levels in their blood.
The Glass 40 Ceiling
The United Federation of Teachers has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in New York State charging that teachers over 40 face, according to UFT president Randi Weingarten, as reported in The New York Times, “discriminatory use of the disciplinary system” and a “discriminatory pattern and practice of coercing, threatening and harassing teachers over 40 years of age to ‘encourage’ those teachers to leave their assigned schools.”
Over the past two years, some 85 to 90 percent of disciplinary charges were brought against teachers over 40, even though they constituted just 63 percent of the workforce. Ms. Weingarten accused Chancellor Joel I. Klein with “a disdain for experience.” A Department of Education spokesperson called the charges baseless.
