Stop being afraid of “round” anniversary numbers! These are just numbers and don’t say anything about your age. The very concept of which it is time to reconsider – scientists say.
“Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was older than all those present. He was thirty-four, the age of fading.” This famous quote from Yuri Tynyanov certainly comes to mind whenever it comes to the subjectivity of such a concept as age (1). But idle talk is one thing, and scientific research is quite another. It seems that even serious scientists are already advocating to reconsider our ideas about age in general and old age in particular. “Increasing life expectancy can lead to a slowdown in the aging of the population” – this is the name of the new work of demographers Sergey Shcherbov and Warren Sanderson (Warren Sanderson) (2). It would seem paradoxical: after all, the faster this very duration grows, the faster the number of old people increases, doesn’t it? No, scientists say. Because the very concept of age has changed. “Two hundred years ago, a sixty-year-old man was considered a deep and decrepit old man,” explains Sergey Shcherbov. “However, today it is much more appropriate to speak of such a person as a middle-aged person.”
And it’s not just a rough estimate of how much more a person will live in the world. Old age is usually associated with a certain (alas, low) level of health and physical activity, a decrease in productivity at work and the ability to self-service and self-sufficiency. So, the studies of Shcherbov and Sanderson testify: today, residents of developed European countries at the age of 65, which used to be considered almost the official “old age limit”, according to the indicators listed above, cannot be enrolled in old people in any way. “Humanity’s ideas about old age are constantly changing, and we must continue to change them as a person gets the opportunity to live longer, while maintaining health and strength,” Sergey Shcherbov is sure. And if we approach with these new measures the forecasting of life expectancy and the structural analysis of the population of Europe until 2050 – which demographers have done. – then the picture is quite consistent with the title of the article. Life expectancy is growing, and the percentage of old people is declining – simply because even 65, it turns out, is not old at all.
Agree, good news. I would just like to know about the male “mid-life crisis”. In the light of recent scientific discoveries, will he also “move” closer to sixty? Or will it stay around XNUMX?
1. Y. Tynyanov “Pushkin” (Book Club Knigovek, 2011).
2. W. Sanderson, S. Scherbov “Faster Increases in Human Life Expectancy Could Lead to Slower Population Aging”. Online publication in PLOS ONE magazine dated April 15, 2015.