12/6/2012 – Center on Longevity Director Laura Carstensen Makes AARP's "The Influentials: 50 Over 50" List

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Center on Longevity Founding Director Laura Carstensen was listed in AARP’s “The Influentials: 50 Over 50” List. Among those listed are U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, political satirist and talk show host Jon Stewart and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen.

“On Wall Street, in Washington and beyond, these folks have a huge impact on our daily lives and futures.”

See the full list at AARP.

12/5/2012 – For the Old, Less Sense of Whom to Trust

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There’s a reason so many older people fall for financial scams, new research suggests. They don’t respond as readily to visual cues that suggest a person might be untrustworthy, and their brains don’t send out as many warning signals that ignite a danger ahead gut response.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

12/5/2012 – Generation Y looks far ahead, to retirement

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When it comes to saving money, Generation Y is asking “why not?”

Young people are discovering that the earlier they start saving for retirement and the longer they work, the larger the nest egg will be. And they are looking for ways to change their savings behavior accordingly.

Read the full article at The Boston Globe.

12/5/2012 – Know What You’ll Look Like in 30 Years – Maybe Then You’ll Max Out Your 401(k)

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Don’t think you’ll ever get old? Keith Richards probably didn’t either. But at least he had a retirement plan. Chances are good, however, that you’re not saving enough for your retirement. To convince you to sock away enough gold for your golden years, Merrill Edge has launched an online magic mirror to remind you that you won’t be forever young.

Read the full article at Wired.

 

12/3/2012 – Forced to Choose: Exploring Other Options

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Medicare will pay for hospice, the acknowledged gold standard for those at the end of life and their families, and it will also pay for skilled nursing (known in this universe as the “sniff” benefit, for Skilled Nursing Facility or S.N.F.). But only rarely will it cover both at the same time, which creates a financial bind.

Rather than pay hundreds of dollars a day out of pocket for room and board in a nursing home, most families opt for S.N.F. coverage. But they pay a price in other ways: they lose the visits by nurses and aides and social workers, the comfort care, the pain relief and the spiritual support that can make hospice such a godsend, whether patients are at home or in nursing homes.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

12/1/2012 – More Babies, Please

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IN the eternally recurring debates about whether some rival great power will knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

12/1/2012 – Mortgage Catch Pushes Widows Into Foreclosure

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Just as the housing market is recovering, a growing group of homeowners — widows over the age of 50 whose husbands alone were holders of the mortgage — are losing their homes to foreclosure because of a paperwork flaw that keeps them from obtaining loan modifications.

In the latest chapter of the foreclosure crisis, homeowners over 50 are falling into foreclosure at the fastest pace of any age group, according to nationwide data, in part because women are outliving their spouses and are unable to cope with cuts in their pensions, ballooning medical costs — and the fine print on their mortgages.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

12/1/2012 – Taking a Stand for Office Ergonomics

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The health studies that conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around more, have always struck me as fitting into the “well, duh” category.
Related

Bits Blog: Field Notes in Ergonomic Diversity: Standup Workers Speak (December 2, 2012)
But a closer look at the accumulating research on sitting reveals something more intriguing, and disturbing: the health hazards of sitting for long stretches are significant even for people who are quite active when they’re not sitting down. That point was reiterated recently in two studies, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine and in Diabetologia, a journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

11/29/2012 – Why Can’t I Hear as Well as Before?

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While hearing loss can have a variety of causes, including infection and some medications, presbycusis is the term for the gradual decline in ear function that occurs as people age. “The sensory nerve endings in the organ of hearing become structurally damaged,” said Dr. Gordon B. Hughes, program director of clinical trials for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. “There are other changes in chemistry and such which take place as well, but the structural damage is what causes the permanent hearing loss.”

Most often the problem is the loss of sensory receptors in the inner ear known as hair cells, experts say. Heart disease, high blood pressure and vascular conditions caused by problems like diabetes can also play a role by reducing the blood supply to the ear.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

11/29/2012 – Under One Roof, Building for Extended Families

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A Pew study reports that 41 percent of adults between 25 and 29 are now living, or have lived recently, with their parents. Over all, more than 50 million Americans are in multigenerational households, a 10 percent increase from 2007. It is a back-to-the-future moment.

“You have to go back to the 1940s to see those kinds of numbers,” said Stephen Melman, director of economic services at the National Association of Home Builders. “What the recession has done has really hit household formation hard, so instead of forming households we are having some contractions: the college student moving back in or someone’s brother-in-law loses a job. It’s an opportunity for the builders.”

Read the full article at The New York Times.