The Great Fear: Can America Support Increasing Longevity?
America is not prepared to support its unprecedently large population of aging adults, as is evidenced in the film “Coming of Age in Aging America.” Not only is the United States not prepared to financially sustain a growing population experiencing unforeseen longevity, we do not have enough young people to care for the aging population nor do we have the appropriate city infrastructure to support mobility and lifestyle needs of the aging population. Current policies for older adults and city infrastructure need to change at a root level in order to better meet the needs and rights of an aging America.
Today’s social policies regarding older adults are based in an outdated lifespan plan when the age of retirement was set at 65 and life expectancy was 62 (Herbes-Sommers, 2017). The ideal timeline is shifting, but we have not changed policies to adjust to a 100-year lifespan. According to the film, one of the barriers for making changes in policies and benefiting the aging population so they can help themselves is the issue of ageism. Stereotypes of feeble, isolated older adults in mental and physical decline results in discrimination against hiring older people in the workplace. Not to mention, older adults internalize these stereotypes and experience health issues because of them. Evidence to the contrary shows that older adults (in accommodating working conditions) are quite productive and their extensive experience can help round out a team of younger, newer workers.
Yet, older adults continue to be discriminated against and thus have fewer opportunities for income, resources, and options for a lifestyle of their choosing. When we begin looking at ageism coupled with racism and/or sexism, we see an even greater issue with how America treats its aging population. For instance, Black males have difficulty envisioning their future because their life expectancy is much lower than their White counterparts (Herbes-Sommers, 2017). Meanwhile, older females, while outliving their male counterparts on average, do not benefit as much from OASDI because they tend to work less when they have child-rearing responsibilities and lose a portion of their spouse’s Social Security benefit if their spouse has passed away (Ji Seon Lee lecture, 2019 July 25).
Most older people prefer to age well in their own communities rather than in geriatric facilities. As it stands, many older adults experience elder abuse in the form of isolation and loneliness in their community because of our current suburban infrastructure. Suburban America was designed for a single lifestyle: the white nuclear family. However, many aging adults live in suburbs and a change to infrastructure needs to happen to make the neighborhood more accessible to them. Despite so many wanting to live at home, there is little to no support from any current social policies for family members who do in-home care for their aging relatives (Chapin, 2017; Cox, 2015). Aging adults who are forced into “old folks’ homes” may be subject to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness as they lose autonomy.
The policy that most benefits older adults is OASDI, more specifically Social Security. OASDI was developed to protect workers from loss of income due to retirement, disability or death and provides monthly checks and is financed by payroll taxes (Chapin, 2017). While the policy has done well to support aging adults in retirement in the past, it is largely influenced by the value of work ethic, as it only benefits those who have worked for a minimum number of terms in their lifetime. Further evidence suggests that the benefits become less and less as we look across race and gender factors. For instance, women tend to contribute less work than men and thus receive less benefits in retirement. Meanwhile, people of color do not live as long as their white counterparts and thus benefit less from SS. Not to mention undocumented immigrants do not benefit from OASDI, though they are a major portion of our work force. Today, Social Security is staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Still, the benefits from Social Security have become universal rights, which is more than can be said about aging well in America.
In order to revise current policies, we need to frame aging well as a human right. Cox (2015) encourages the development of policies based on the concept of aging as a human right by realizing that older adults are human capital with potential still left to be tapped into. While that’s a great start to developing policies to better benefit older adults, we must also re-envision a world where humans are living longer and what that means for the work arena.
“Coming of Age in Aging America” suggests we rethink what living 100 years will look like, such that we extend work across the lifespan with a “pleasantly disruptive” period in our 50s when most people are at the tail end of the “squeeze” in which our children and parents are all financially dependent on us. Thus, Americans in their midlife can have the opportunity for leisure time as they receive social security benefits for a brief period before going back to work in their later years. This sort of change would mean Americans work longer, but it would also mean we could change the Social Security system by cycling in more money over a person’s 100-year lifespan.
Meanwhile, we need to change our work environments and city infrastructure to be all-age friendly. This would not only benefit older people, but people throughout their lifetimes. Ideally, we’ll all reach old age, so we will all benefit from reworking America to better benefit the aging population now.
References
Chapin, R. (2017). Social policy for effective practice, (4th Ed.). NY: Routledge
Cox, C. (2015). Social policy for an aging society, New York: Springer. Chapters 1, 2, & 4. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/lib/fordham-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1921770
Herbes-Sommers, C. (Filmmaker). (2017) Coming of age in America. [Film] Vital Pictures. Retrieved from https://fordham.kanopy.com/video/coming-age-america
Seon Lee, J. (2019 July 25) Lecture.
