They were over age 70, and most thought that over the next five to 10 years, their “overall quality of life” — finances, mental and physical health, recreation, family situation — would stay the same (49 percent) or improve (23 percent).
They were over age 70, and a majority expected their health would remain the same or get better over the next five to 10 years. They intended — 90 percent of them — to live in their current homes for five to 10 years, and most were confident that they could without any substantial home modifications.
And if a “significant unexpected expense” should strike, like an accident or an illness, they were overwhelmingly confident they would have the ability to pay for it. Why not? They were also very confident that their income would be sufficient to cover their monthly expenses.
I read through the results of this national telephone survey of 2,250 Americans over age 60, called the “United States of Aging” and conducted by the polling company Penn Schoen Berland, wondering what was making the older group of respondents so insistently optimistic. Everything sounded hunky-dory.
I see much grimmer tidings elsewhere on a daily basis. What about that brief form the Boston College Center for Retirement Research showing that in 2010, the average household approaching retirement had just $120,000 in IRAs or 401(k)’s, which, if used to buy an annuity, would produce only $575 in monthly income? What of that new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing significant increases in the proportion of older Americans with multiple chronic diseases?
Were the respondents in this survey being wonderfully upbeat? Or, less wonderfully, unrealistic? Though people did express some concerns when the questions got more specific, particularly those with lower incomes, on the whole these aging Americans envisioned buoyant futures.
When I called a couple of my favorite gerontologists to help me puzzle this out, they weren’t really surprised; social scientists have known for years that older people, freed from the midlife stresses of work and child rearing, become happier. They call it the U-shaped curve: life satisfaction is greatest in people’s youth and then again in old age.
“You’re seeing resilience,” said David J. Ekerdt, a University of Kansas gerontologist. “You’re seeing the way we adjust our frames of reference to continue to assert, ‘I’m the kind of person who’ll be O.K.’”
Probably some of this resilience stems from the way the survey (with a +/- 3 percent margin of error) was conducted. Sponsored by the National Council on Aging and United Healthcare, it used a sample divided into groups aged 60 to 64, 65 to 69, and 70-plus – but it doesn’t tell us how plus. Health problems and functional limitations grow more common as people pass 80, but we don’t know how many 80-plus respondents were included.
The Cornell gerontologist Karl Pillemer, a veteran researcher, said the way some survey questions were worded, referring to a five- to 10-year horizon, could have caused confusion. If you’re 72 and expect your health to remain the same for five years, you might well be right. If you’re 82 and think it won’t change over 10 years, you probably aren’t.
It’s also true that those over 70 are more likely than the boomers behind them to have retired with pensions, intact marriages and paid-off mortgages. Less financially battered by the recession, they may indeed be more secure financially, thus less worried.
Still, a psychological dimension is also involved. “There are developmental processes that occur as part of aging that make people more positive,” said Dr. Pillemer, who has collected advice from more than 1,500 seniors as part of the Legacy Project. Many studies show that older people are better able to regulate their emotions, to focus on sources of pleasure, to maintain equanimity.
The impulse to express optimism also reflects an effort to sustain one’s identity, Dr. Ekerdt said. “As we get older and the losses exceed the gains, we try to preserve some continuity, an idea of sameness about ourselves,” he said. So you say you’ll stay healthy, stay solvent, stay in your house. “It’s the marvelous mechanism that keeps us sane.”
It could get less marvelous when the idea outlives its basis in fact. Any number of readers can describe the tensions that arise when older relatives are falling on stairs, causing repeated fender-benders and otherwise faltering while they continue to insist that they’re fine, that they can stay in their houses and their cars, that they don’t need any help.
That’s not a problem reflected in the “United States of Aging,” but the survey will be conducted annually. Over time, we’ll get to see how older people feel about their futures as they step further into them.