Rebecca Chung
April 26, 2001
3-mins. Oral Presentation
Pages 303-345
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Instructions for this presentation
Report 1: ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE AGE OF RAGE
Report 2: Self-Witnessing Report on the Age of Rage
Text: The Safety of Elderly Drivers by J. Peter Rothe
I chose pages 307 to 309. This section is about 'The Demography of Aging'. Rothe presents interesting findings in here. With the significant increasing large number of the elderly population, it is unavoidable to study the aging population with great consideration. One interesting fact I found while reading this section was the introduction of the age sixty-five for Germans to retire in 1882 , when the average life span was forty-five. This concept of age sixty-five was passed down to Americans during the Depression in 1935. I had no idea that the retire age was adopted this way.
Rothe points out the relativism of "packaging" the specific ages to distinct groups of people- "old" and "young". I like the way he used the word "packaging". Most of the time, we use the word "stereotype" or "discrimination" when we see grouping of certain people, especially with the elderly population. I think "packaging" is a much better word to describe the division in the ages.
Rothe also talks about how the middle age population has increased by 37.3 percent and the younger age population has decreased by 19 percent (Statistics Canada 1984). This study is little old, so I don't know the exact population changes that has been going on recently, but based on this study, one can see that the older population will grow larger compare to the younger population. This increase in the older population can be contributed to the increased life longevity and/or decreased mortality. The advancements in medical technology can be attributed to this result of increase number in older population.
Human life expectancy also increased from the past. It is noted in the text that "It has recently been suggested that the human life span may be between ninety-five and 100 years of age". I learned from another class that babies born in 2000 can expect to live up to over 100 years old. The human life span has increase dramatically past decade and this is a amazing improvement. However there is a downside to the increased life longevity. Rothe noted in the text that elderly will be in poorer health at a later period in their life due to the chronic diseases. Some of the factors that contribute to the increased life longevity are increase in positive attitude towards their physical fitness, decrease in number of smokers, and decline in consumption of alcohol.
Overall this section was interesting and I really enjoy reading this last part of this book. I learned interesting things about aging population and how they are affected by and adapting to the new technology. The older population has been ignored till not too long ago. With the growing number of the older population, they are finally receiving the attention and I hope this will result in finding good solutions for them.