Major Social problems as we get older

It is said that in 2050, the senior age population will increase over 88.5 million.

With the consistent research of medicines, it is expanding the life expectancy of everyone.
People are living longer and healthier lives which is allowing them to continue to work.
An advantage for an elder searching for a job is that there is a demand for experienced workers.

Safety and Security

Some problems with aging is elder abuse physical, sexual, psychological, financial, neglect, and abandonment.
Home, health care, and medical care are provided for patients who can not leave their home.
Short term aid is only available to patients with 6 months or less to live

Senior Care Behind Closed Doors

The quality of a nursing home depends on who is funding it.
State funded homes provide poorer care than those that are privately funded.
The Nursing Home Reform Act high lighted the abuse and neglect of residents in nursing homes across the United States.

Getting old isn’t nearly as bad as people think it will be. Nor is it quite as good.

On aspects of everyday life ranging from mental acuity to physical dexterity to sexual activity to financial security, a new Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey on aging among a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults finds a sizable gap between the expectations that young and middle-aged adults have about old age and the actual experiences reported by older Americans themselves.

These disparities come into sharpest focus when survey respondents are asked about a series of negative benchmarks often associated with aging, such as illness, memory loss, an inability to drive, an end to sexual activity, a struggle with loneliness and depression, and difficulty paying bills. In every instance, older adults report experiencing them at lower levels (often far lower) than younger adults report expecting to encounter them when they grow old.1

At the same time, however, older adults report experiencing fewer of the benefits of aging that younger adults expect to enjoy when they grow old, such as spending more time with their family, traveling more for pleasure, having more time for hobbies, doing volunteer work or starting a second career.

Family Relationships

Staying in Touch with the Kids. Nearly nine-in-ten adults (87%) ages 65 and older have children. Of this group, just over half are in contact with a son or daughter every day, and an additional 40% are in contact with at least one child–either in person, by phone or by email–at least once a week. Mothers and daughters are in the most frequent contact; fathers and daughters the least. Sons fall in the middle, and they keep in touch with older mothers and fathers at equal rates. Overall, three-quarters of adults who have a parent or parents ages 65 and older say they are very satisfied with their relationship with their parent(s), but that share falls to 62% if a parent needs help caring for his or her needs.

Was the Great Bard Mistaken? Shakespeare wrote that the last of the “seven ages of man” is a second childhood. Through the centuries, other poets and philosophers have observed that parents and children often reverse roles as parents grow older. Not so, says the Pew Research survey. Just 12% of parents ages 65 and older say they generally rely on their children more than their children rely on them. An additional 14% say their children rely more on them. The majority–58%–says neither relies on the other, and 13% say they rely on one another equally. Responses to this question from children of older parents are broadly similar.

Transfers within Families.

Despite these reported patterns of non-reliance, older parents and their adult children do help each other out in a variety of ways. However, the perspectives on these transfers of money and time differ by generation. For example, about half (51%) of parents ages 65 and older say they have given their children money in the past year, while just 14% say their children have given them money. The intra-family accounting comes out quite differently from the perspective of adult children.

Among survey respondents who have a parent or parents ages 65 or older, a quarter say they received money from a parent in the past year, while an almost equal share (21%) say they gave money to their parent(s). There are similar difference in perception, by generation, about who helps whom with errands and other daily activities. (To be clear, the survey did not interview specific pairs of parents and children; rather, it contacted random samples who fell into these and other demographic categories.) Not surprisingly, as parents advance deeper into old age, both they and the adult children who have such parents report that the balance of assistance tilts more toward children helping parents.

 

End-of-Life Matters.

More than three-quarters of adults ages 65 and older say they’ve talked with their children about their wills; nearly two-thirds say they’ve talked about what to do if they can no longer make their own medical decisions, and more than half say they’ve talked with their children about what to do if they can no longer live independently. Similar shares of adult children of older parents report having had these conversations. Parents and adult children agree that it is the parents who generally initiate these conversations, though 70% of older adults report that this is the case, compared with just 52% of children of older parents who say the same.