13.1 Who are the elderly? aging in society  (Page 2/22)

Scholars in these disciplines have learned that “aging” reflects not just the physiological process of growing older, but also our attitudes and beliefs about the aging process. You’ve likely seen online calculators that promise to determine your “real age” as opposed to your chronological age. These ads target the notion that people may “feel” a different age than their actual years. Some 60-year-olds feel frail and elderly, while some 80-year-olds feel sprightly.

Equally revealing is that as people grow older they define “old age” in terms of greater years than their current age (Logan 1992). Many people want to postpone old age, regarding it as a phase that will never arrive. Some older adults even succumb to stereotyping their own age group (Rothbaum 1983).

In the United States, the experience of being elderly has changed greatly over the past century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many U.S. households were home to multigenerational families, and the experiences and wisdom of elders was respected. They offered wisdom and support to their children and often helped raise their grandchildren (Sweetser 1984).

But in today’s society, with most households confined to the nuclear family, attitudes toward the elderly have changed. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that, of the 105.5 million households in the country, only about 4 million of them (3.7 percent) were multigenerational (U.S. Census Bureau 2001). It is no longer typical for older relatives to live with their children and grandchildren.

Attitudes toward the elderly have also been affected by large societal changes that have happened over the past 100 years. Researchers believe industrialization and modernization have contributed greatly to lowering the power, influence, and prestige the elderly once held.

The elderly have both benefitted and suffered from these rapid social changes. In modern societies, a strong economy created new levels of prosperity for many people. Health care has become more widely accessible and medicine has advanced, allowing the elderly to live longer. However, older people are not as essential to the economic survival of their families and communities as they were in the past.

Studying aging populations

Since its creation in 1790, the U.S. Census Bureau has been tracking age in the population. Age is an important factor to analyze with accompanying demographic figures, such as income and health. The population pyramid below shows projected age distribution patterns for the next several decades.

Statisticians use data to calculate the median age of a population, that is, the number that marks the halfway point in a group’s age range. In the United States, the median age is about 40 (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). That means that about half of Americans are under 40 and about half are over 40. This median age has been increasing, indicating the population as a whole is growing older.