In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California, observed that people tended to interact with fewer people as they moved toward midlife, but that they grew closer to the friends they already had.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
There aren’t many things good about a zero-interest-rate-policy world for retirees or those planning their retirement. But researchers say there is one bright spot.
Most households benefit from waiting to claim Social Security when real interest rates are close to zero, as they are now, according to research just published by National Bureau of Economic Research.
Read the full article at MarketWatch.
A study of a rare gene mutation that protects people against Alzheimer’s disease provides the strongest evidence yet that excessive levels of a normal brain substance, beta amyloid, are a driving force in the disease — bolstering hopes that anti-amyloid drugs already under development might alter the disease’s course or even prevent it.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
The elderly and other vulnerable homeowners are losing their homes because they owe as little as a few hundred dollars in back taxes, according to a report from a consumer group.
Read the full article at CBS News.
It’s true: 65 really is the new 55. Stanford economist John Shoven gives practical advice on how to save for retirement during a struggling economy, low interest rates and longer life spans.
Read the full interview at Stanford University News.
“We’ll have doubling of our older population over the next 20 years. Which makes us aging faster than the United States, which I think is a bit of a surprise to people.” – Adele Hayutin, Director, Global Aging Program, Stanford Center on Longevity.
Hear the full discussion at KQED News.
For years now, efforts to set young against old have been linchpins in campaigns to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and turn those programs over to the private sector. The basic tactic is to portray those programs as giveaways to undeserving seniors that rip off the young; the goal is to turn the ostensibly dispossessed young into an effective political counterweight to reform-resistant elderly.
Read the full article at the Los Angeles Times.
California may be the sixth youngest state right now. But it has an outsized population of Baby Boomers.
“They are turning 65 soon,” says Adele Hayutin, a Senior Research Scholar, at the Stanford Center on Longevity.
“We’ll have a doubling of our older population over the next 20 years,” Hayutin says. “That makes us aging faster than the United States, which I think is a bit of a surprise to people.”
Read the full article The California Report – KQED.
Baby Boomers are starting companies at a faster pace than ever before, according to a March report by the Kauffman Foundation and younger workers lack the disposable income and job prospects they once had. This means we may be witnessing a passing of the innovation baton to members of the older generation. As older Americans begin to define the debate around innovation, then the generation gap will soon make its presence felt in innovation hubs like Silicon Valley.
Read the full article at The Washington Post.
The signal public health achievement of the 20th century was the increase of the human life span. Now, as that achievement helps raise the proportion of the aged around the world, what once seemed an unalloyed blessing is too often regarded as a burden — a financial burden, a health care burden, even a social burden.
“It’s nuts,” said Dr. Linda P. Fried, an epidemiologist and geriatrician who is dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “To assume defeat from what every one of us as individuals wants suggests we’re not asking the right questions.”
Read the full article at The New York Times.