Shifts Ahead in the Graying of America

There he was on the lecture hall screen, Paul Newman, shirt collar open, blue eyes leveled at the viewer, sexy, sexy, sexy--and 60.

Ken Dychtwald, lecturing on “The Aging of America: Implications for the Future of Gerontology,” turned to his audience, primarily social workers and administrators of programs for senior citizens, and asked:

“Is this the person for whom you’re building your senior citizens bingo program?”

The listeners laughed uproariously and applauded. A large number nodded their heads thoughtfully, bemused at the notion of Paul Newman playing bingo with the old folks in their senior centers.

Wide Range of Topics

Dychtwald spoke at the Western Gerontological Society’s 31st annual meeting, which drew 2,000 professionals in the field to a five-day meeting in Denver. Topics ranged from abuse of the elderly and legal and ethical issues to educational and employment problems, and several programs dealt with public policy regarding funding to meet the needs of senior citizens.

At its business meeting, the society voted to change its name to reflect its increasingly nationwide scope and asked members to suggest appropriate names for the eventual change.

In one of several presentations, Dychtwald, himself president of a Berkeley firm that deals with health promotion and planning in the aging area, referred to gerontology as “the boom industry of the future . . . 80% of what will soon be gerontology does not exist today.”

He focused on two aspects of the aging population: the senior boom resulting from the fact people are living longer and the coming middle-age bulge in the population as the Baby Boomers--the 76 million children born between 1946 and 1964--begin turning 40.

“The age-adjusted death rate is declining quite profoundly,”Dychtwald said, “and the reasons, which date back about to 1930, are largely improvements in the environment. A hundred years ago the main source of spreading disease was the environment: the hospital, at a time when doctors and nurses did not know the necessity for germ-free conditions.

“Then came the age of medical progress, of advances in techniques and care, antibiotics, the development of vaccines, including one for polio.

“And now we have the age of life style, of preventive health.”

Increased Life Expectancy

The life expectancy in 1850 was 40 years “and we didn’t need gerontologists because people died before they got old,” Dychtwald said. In this century life expectancy has risen to almost 75, with the number of those over 65 expanding to 25.5 million by 1980--”a population within a population.

“No one has ever seen this before. It is a new phenomenon on the historical scene,” he said.

Dychtwald flashed a slide that showed where the elderly live in America. Eighteen percent of Florida’s population is elderly whereas they are 11% of the population at large. Other states with large elderly populations include those in the Midwest where “the younger people have left and the older have come home to die.”

Statistics also indicate a higher ratio of elderly women to men, partly because “women have an easier time socially,” Dychtwald said.

“Men have an incredible problem aging in America,” he said. “Men establish their identity on a career. Then they go from engineer to assistant housewife. The suicide rate for men over 65 is four times greater than that of the rest of the population.”

He also would like “to see the year 65 retired” as a retirement age because “it has no relevance,” having been selected by Bismarck in 1888 as the age to retire old military commanders at a time when the average life expectancy was 45.

And, while America has always had a culture focused on youth, on July 1, 1983, the number of people over 65 surpassed those under 25--an amazing change from 100 years ago when the median age in America was 16, Dychtwald said.

Then he spoke of the post-World War II era and its boom times--including babies.

“After the war there was a powerful economic drama. In 1946, 6,000 television sets were manufactured a year; by 1953 that had grown to 7 million,” he said. “And the birth rate went wild, seemingly all in one weekend. Three generations of women birthed at once: those who couldn’t afford babies during the Depression, the wives of the returning servicemen and younger teen-agers who saw having a baby as the thing to do because everyone else was.”

Dychtwald, himself a Baby Boomer born in 1950, flashed a slide of the principals of the “Leave It to Beaver” TV show on the screen. Everybody recognized Beaver and Wally and parents Ward and June.

“The focus of the family was the kids,” Dychtwald said. “This was not the Ward and June Show. What was Ward’s career? Nobody knows. The purpose of the family here was to give the kids fun.

Age of Rebellion

“Then the Boomers hit the rebellious years, and when you’ve got 76 million of them it’s a revolution. They needed to find something to rebel against and they found it: the campus.”

A slide showing a bizarrely dressed rock group flashed on the screen, and Dychtwald, now a conservatively attired yuppie-type, confessed that he himself once had hair to his waist and wore clothes similar to those in the photo.

“Fashion was another way to rebel,” he said. “It is not amazing that we looked this way but amazing that we thought we looked good. This generation can fool itself into believing anything . . . .

“Boomers want to keep their youth; they do not want to age like their parents did. There is this fanatic movement for health preservation. Health is the domain of this generation. There will be a pharmacopeial revolution in the next decade--not drugs to solve ailments but things to augment health.

“There also is a growing acceptance of plastic surgery. Boomers don’t think it’s any big deal to get nipped and tucked. My generation also is not proud of gray hair; we have now ‘The Tinting of America’ rather than ‘The Graying.’ A brand new old age is emerging.”

Marketing Strategies Shift

As the middle-aged and elderly populations grow, business is focusing marketing strategies on them, and the elderly’s economic clout may indeed create the biggest change in American life, Dychtwald said. He showed a series of slides of ads showing happy, healthy oldsters using beauty products (“shampoo for hair over 40”), playing tennis at idyllic real estate developments, taking cruises with entertainers from the Lawrence Welk show, exercising to Debbie Reynolds tapes featuring Big Band era music, generally living the good life.

“We are seeing the end of the linear life plan and the rise of the cyclic,” Dychtwald said. “In the old linear plan, life divided into three sequential phases: education, work, leisure. With the cyclic, we will do each for a while--education, work a while, take time off to have a family, then go back to school, back to work, and so on.

Work or Leisure

“Less than 20% of those over 65 are working. But resting for 25 years can be real boring. All we have now is work or leisure, but that will change. We are beginning phase retirement, perhaps working 30 hours instead of 40, for instance.

“We have the first leisure class in America: the elderly, and that will be a whole new industry . . . . Gerontology in the future will be a full spectrum--recreation, leisure, as well as health care and care of the poor. People will find second careers, go back to college. And computers--I wonder when companies will start to market to the older group instead of trying to sell them for kids.”

As a slide of Joan Collins seductively holding a bath towel loosely around her curvy body appeared on the screen, Dychtwald mused about sex in aging.

“Joan Collins, in her 50s, was voted the sexiest woman in America in a recent Reader’s Digest poll,” he said. “The success of ‘Dynasty’ shows that we want to see romances in the 50-60 age group.” A slide of Collins and ‘Dynasty’ co-star John Forsythe in horizontal embrace flashed on the screen. “You don’t see Beaver and Wally in this picture,” Dychtwald said.

Health System Unprepared

He turned to health care and shocked his audience with a statistic: There are fewer than 100 fully trained physicians in geriatrics in the nation. And while the elderly are afflicted with 10 chronic degenerative diseases--83% of those over 65 have at least one chronic condition, such as arthritis--hospitals are geared to acute infectious diseases that for the most part have been wiped out, such as diphtheria, typhoid and smallpox.

“Our health care system (for the elderly) is unprepared, unskilled, untrained--and making a lot of money off old people,” Dychtwald said.

In a subsequent interview, Dychtwald expanded his views on the health care system.

“It was not set up to prevent chronic degenerative diseases nor to do a good job of managing them,” he said. “Nor are insurance firms set up to reimburse for them. If you have a ski accident and break a leg, insurance will pay, but it will not for health care for a chronic problem, say a therapist twice a week at home to ease arthritis.

“The elderly are being poorly treated by people who are not properly trained. Many mental difficulties are wrongly diagnosed, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. Sometimes the problem is polypharmacy--overuse of drugs . . . Many of the drugs most commonly prescribed to the elderly have never been tested on people over 60.”

Role Models Needed

He also labeled the psychological aspect of aging as “crucial. The mind-set is dominant. The elderly have to know who they are, how long they can live, what they are doing. We are shaped by our culture. If the culture says it is good to live longer, people live longer.”

Dychtwald said we also need “elderheroes” and proceeded to name some: George Burns, Lena Horne (“more beautiful now than ever”), astronaut John Young (now 50), Ronald and Nancy Reagan, golfers Don January and Sam Snead, Jack LaLanne.

Dychtwald also predicted an unparalleled youth revolution as the old- and middle-aged retain power and money.

“As kids reach 15 and 18 and realize it will be impossible to get good jobs or buy homes because their elders have the good jobs and the homes, the youth will rebel,” he said. “They will be outraged. Like the Gray Panthers, they will experience social injustice and demand more taxpayer money for the things they want.”