The United Nations defines an elderly person as someone who is over 60 years old. However, families and communities often use other sociocultural values. Traditionally, people aged 65 and over are considered to be people aged 65 and over. By that definition, in 1987 there were just over 30 million older people in the United States, more than 12 percent of the total in the U.S.
UU. Population of nearly 252 million (Table 3,. This group makes up the vast majority, nearly 96 percent, of Medicare beneficiaries.1 People often wonder if what they experience as they age is normal or abnormal. While people age somewhat differently, some changes are the result of internal processes, that is, of aging itself.
Therefore, such changes, although unwanted, are considered normal and are sometimes referred to as pure aging. These changes occur in all people who live long enough, and that universality is part of the definition of pure aging. Changes are to be expected and, in general, are inevitable. For example, as people age, the lens of the eye thickens, stiffens, and becomes less able to focus on nearby objects, such as reading materials (a disorder called presbyopia).
This change practically occurs in all older adults. Therefore, presbyopia is considered normal aging. Other terms used to describe these changes are common aging and senescence. The white population has a higher proportion of older people than other ethnic groups (13 percent compared to 8 and 5 percent of the black and Hispanic populations, respectively) and a higher proportion of older people (i.e., in 1986, the median income of older women was almost 45 percent lower than the median income of older men).Walking was the most frequently reported limitation, affecting 4.9 million older people (19 percent of the population surveyed).
Of the dependent elderly living in communities in 1985, nearly 74 percent received all their care from informal caregivers; only a small percentage relied exclusively on formal sources of care of the type mentioned above (Scanlon, 198). According to the Special Committee on Aging (1987-198), in 1960, less than 15 percent of the federal budget was spent on older people; 90 percent went to retirement income and 6 percent to health care. Other sources of income for older people include salaries (17 percent of total income), pensions (16 percent) and other sources (2 percent). The proportion of support for the elderly is defined as the ratio between people aged 65 and over and those of working age, aged 18 to 64. People 65 and older have lower incomes on average than people under 65, and the disparity increases as older people age.
While the incomes of older people are lower than those of people who are not, they have increased steadily. In addition, older women have, on average, a higher prevalence of limitations in activities of daily living, visit the doctor more frequently and are more users of hospital and nursing home care than men. However, the real disparity between these numbers may not be as great when considering the differences in spending needs between older people's households and those that are not. In that case, the proportion of poor elderly people would increase from about 13 percent to about 15.2 percent of the total elderly group.
As the elderly population increases both in size and age, the need for non-institutional services will increase. The Commonwealth Fund has recently supported a major commission to examine issues related to the elderly population. As a result of legislative changes in recent decades, federal spending on income protection, health insurance and other services designed to reduce high levels of poverty among older people has increased. The most prevalent chronic conditions (expressed in terms of morbidity for these conditions) in the elderly population include arthritis, hypertension, hearing impairment, and heart conditions (Table 3.1).
