Are Boomers in
Worst Health than Older Peers?
Americans in their early to mid-50s today report poorer
health, more pain and more trouble doing
everyday physical tasks than their older
peers reported at the same age in years
past, a recent analysis has shown. The
research, published in print and online this
week by the nonprofit National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER), was supported by
the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a
component of the National Institutes of
Health.
The study was conducted by Beth J. Soldo, Ph.D., Olivia
Mitchell, Ph.D., and John McCabe, Ph.D., of
the University of Pennsylvania, and Rania
Tfaily, Ph.D., of Carleton University,
Ottawa, Ontario. The newly published report
appears as part of NBER’s Working Paper
series and follows the analysis’ online
appearance in 2006. It will also be
published in a refereed volume from Oxford
University Press in 2007.
Using a summary health index developed for their analysis,
the researchers compared the overall,
self-reported health of people in three
birth-year groups—those born in 1936-41 (now
ages 66 to 71), 1942-47 (now ages 60 to 65)
and 1948-53 (now ages 54 to 59). The data
came from the Health and Retirement Study
(HRS), a nationwide, NIA-sponsored survey of
more than 20,000 Americans over age 50 that
began in 1992.
It draws from survey respondents’ answers to questions about
their health and well-being when they were
all between the ages of 51 and 56. The
researchers’ health index blended HRS
participants’ ratings of their health,
difficulty with physical mobility and
agility, and perception of physical pain.
The study showed:
The two younger groups were less likely than the oldest group
to have said their health was “excellent or
very good” at 51 to 56 years of age.
The youngest group reported having more pain, chronic health
conditions, and drinking and psychiatric
problems than people who were the same age
12 years earlier.
Compared with the oldest group, the youngest group was more
likely to have reported difficulty in
walking, climbing steps, getting up from a
chair, kneeling or crouching, and doing
other normal daily physical tasks.
This new analysis provides some initial data raising the
question of whether today’s pre-retirees
could reach retirement age in worse shape
than their predecessors, with individuals
potentially in poorer health than current
retirees and possibly increasing health care
costs for society. In the past two decades,
there has been a dramatic decline in
disability among people 65 and older. One
recent report of this trend, for example,
found that the prevalence of chronic
disability among people 65 and older fell
from 26.5 percent in 1982 to 19 percent in
2004/2005 (see "Disability Among Older
Americans Continues Significant Decline").
Researchers and policymakers are vitally interested in
whether this trend will continue, accelerate
or decelerate with the retirement of the
baby boom, a critically important question
in planning for health, housing and other
needs of this wave of retirees, who begin to
turn 65 in 2011.
The NBER report follows earlier analyses, including an
NIA-supported study suggesting that the
obesity epidemic, which is driving higher
rates of diabetes, heart disease and
hypertension, could threaten the disability
decline as well. It will be important to
develop and understand new data about
pre-retirees to see which direction the
boomer cohort will take, says Richard Suzman,
Ph.D., director of the NIA’s Behavioral and
Social Research Program