| 3:33p |
Eldering; quick quote and question...
"By 2020 the number of people over 65 will reach a historic high of 55 million, up from 20 million in 1970. Money will be tight to pay for their care, as the ratio of taxable workers per benefits-collecting retiree will shrink from four to two. Consumer products, homes and offices will have to be redesigned to be made more accessible to the infirm."
That's from "Rethinking Old Age," by Dorothy Pomerantz, on pp. 122-123 of the November 26, 2007 issue of Forbes; the quote is on page 123.
There will be 55 million Over-Sixty-Fives by 2020. And what does that bring to Pomerantz's mind? That money will be tight to pay for the care and housing and equipping of all these millions of "infirm" elders.
It's a particularly odd chunk of text in its context, which is supposed to be an article about Stanford professor Laura Carstensen's research and work on what she calls "the positivity effect" -- described on page 122 as "how people focus more on positive than negative information in old age. We are, it turns out, inclined to get happier -- or at least focus on that which will make us more content -- as we close in on death."
The whole article struck me as infirm. Especially the curious utterance attributed to Carstensen that is its final sentence: "We need to get science and technology working to make the real vulnerabilities associated with aging invisible." What on earth do you suppose that was intended to mean? |