Improvements in education, nutrition, and sanitation throughout the 20th century have likely been crucial in enhancing cognitive, motor, psychological, and sensory abilities.
A recent study from the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health highlights notable improvements in the overall health of older adults in England compared to previous generations. Instead of focusing solely on the presence or absence of disease, the research—published in Nature Aging—adopted a novel approach to assess trends in individuals’ functional abilities, including cognitive, locomotor, psychological, and sensory capacities.
Drawing on data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the findings reveal that today’s older adults demonstrate better physical and mental functioning than their counterparts of earlier generations at the same age.
“These improvements were large,” said John Beard, MBBS, PhD, Irene Diamond Professor of Aging in Health Policy and Management in the Butler Columbia Aging Center of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and author of the study. For example, a 68-year-old born in 1950 had a similar capacity to a 62-year-old born a decade earlier, and those born in 1940 had better functioning than those born in 1930 or 1920. Beard noted, “If we had compared someone born in 1950 with someone born in 1920, we would have likely observed even greater improvements.”
Beard and his colleagues undertook similar analyses in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). They found similar trends, although this analysis was limited by the much shorter follow-up period in the Chinese study compared to the English study.
Factors Driving Improvements
Beard says that improvements in education, nutrition, and sanitation over the course of the twentieth century are likely to have played a key role. Medical advances—such as joint replacements and better treatments for chronic conditions—were also likely to be contributing factors. The researchers caution, however, that their observations are for a specific period and in a single country. The same trends may not have been seen in the US, or across the whole of the population.
“We were surprised by just how large these improvements were, particularly when comparing people born after World War Two with earlier-born groups,” said Beard. “But there is nothing to say we will continue to see the same improvements moving forward, and changes such as the increasing prevalence of obesity may even see these trends reverse. It is also likely that more advantaged groups will have experienced greater gains than others. But overall, the trends were very strong and suggest that, for many people, 70 really may be the new 60.”
Aging expert Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois praised the study, stating, “This is a powerful article. It shows that intrinsic capacity—what really matters to people as they age—is inherently modifiable. With this evidence, we see that medical science can enhance intrinsic capacity, providing a hopeful message for the future.”
Reference: “Cohort trends in intrinsic capacity in England and China” by John R. Beard, Katja Hanewald, Yafei Si, Jotheeswaran Amuthavalli Thiyagarajan and Dario Moreno-Agostino, 19 December 2024, Nature Aging.
DOI: 10.1038/s43587-024-00741-w
Co-authors are Katja Hanewald and Yafei Si, UNSW Business School, Sydney, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research (CEPAR), Australia; Jotheeswaran Amuthavalli Thiyagarajan, Department of Maternal, Child, Adolescent Health and Aging, World Health Organization, Geneva; and Dario Moreno-Agostino, UCL Social Research Institute, University College London, and ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, King’s College London.
The research was supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR, project CE170100005) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW); Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London [ES/S012567/1]; and the National Social Science Foundation of China (23AZD091). Funding was also provided by the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG030153, RC2 AG036619, R03 AG043052), and (R01 AG030153, RC2 AG036619, and R03 AG043052).
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
6 Comments
I agree. When I studied physics at UT Austin I was shocked by how little the Chinese
Maybe. This contrasts against life expectancy in the UK plateauing around year 2000, and apparently beginning to drop around 2019 (UK Health Security Agency). In the US, it plateaued around 2010, and began plummeting around 2018 (CDC). Recent data is more uncertain, but that is the overall trend. The conclusion might be that people making it to advanced age are healthier, even if the average person is less likely to get there.
And I’ve heard that 120s are new 110s, so I’m greatly looking forward to that, too.
England, the United States of America, and some other unstudied (or just unpublished) countries are showing a major loss in expected longevity. Might this be due to importing vast numbers of third world people (who will benefit enormously from the more elevated state of first world medical practice) may, by their presence in the data, bring the overall expectancy in the population down, but (also by their presence in the data) posit a greater “wealth effect” in the health data for the polity studied? Recent declines in population life/function longevities of first world nations may just mostly reflecting the access that people in poorer health are now able to obtain due to new arrival in a more advanced societal system. I don’t see that mentioned in the article
We 70+ year-old Brits were born into the once excellent British National Health System created in 1948 and which delivered excellent health care-until 1979 when Thatcher’s loser-pays economic manta was imposed on all Brits. Thatcher had by then sacrificed the free 600 mil of milk per day per school-kid back in the days when she had become Minister for Education, thus threatening the school-kids of the less well off with ricketts.
Thatcher and her ilk of the last 40 years may prefer to claim the successes of the previous “socialist” (both Labour and Conservative) governments as their own, but they are liars.
The other side of that coin is that octogenarians like myself in the USA didn’t have the advantages you speak of, and I have been quite healthy my whole life. I have had little need for the “excellent” health system you speak of. Yet, I’m still quite healthy and alert.