Aging, International

The term aging is broad and implies various concepts and dimensions including chronological, biological, and mental aging, which are applicable to persons with and without disabilities. The aging process occurs in the context of historical age. Chronological age is the lived time from birth, and administrative age is the age cutoff used by administrators, statisticians, and epidemiologists. Biological aging refers to the physical state of the body in its relation with biological processes of growth, ripening, disease, and decay of organ functioning and body functioning. Social, psychological, cognitive, and social ability also affect aging, and aging may be strongly influenced by legal, ethical, religious, and historical considerations. For instance, under the notion of legal age (categorization based on political considerations), the age category of 55 to 65 years reflects the period when some societies legislate or allow individuals to stop work and become pensioners.

Under the notion of social age, aging may be characterized as a period of changing lifestyle, preretirement, or other social determinants of growing older. As members of the greater society, older adults are more underprivileged when they are long-term disabled. They are often unemployed or underemployed; underprivileged in income and social status; segregated in a special system of work or activity, housing or leisure; and often dependent on the help of others. Scientific data about the impact on social aging of those indicators of low social economic status, segregation, and dependency on health and on the use of health services are very scarce.

Mental or cognitive age refers to intellectual and maturational capabilities. It can be very important in the analysis and interpretation of behavior. When a 2-year-old child repeatedly throws a drinking cup on the floor, it is usually interpreted as a sensory-motor game played by that child and his or her parents. The same behavior, exhibited by an older adult, is likely to be viewed as destructive, or even as psychopathological. Cohort effects require the researcher to consider the dimension of historical age in psychological, social, and epidemiological studies. One needs to analyse the impact of cohort effects in all aspects of human life of today's adults who are elderly. To explain today's behavior, adaptations, complaints, functioning, and health problems, one needs to take into account the different opportunity structures and socializing systems available to them when they were young. For [Page 79]example, as a group, young adults with disabilities of today will know much more about their heart, its function, irregularities, and heart failure when they are 60 years old compared to those adults who have already reached this age. In countries such as Germany and Austria, there are very few survivors with severe disabilities of the Nazi regime. Persons from the birth cohorts before the year 1945 are almost nonexistent in the disability statistics of those countries. In all countries, but especially in the developing countries, older adults are healthy survivors from limited opportunity structures in the past. This is the case for persons without lifelong disability, but is especially evident for persons with lifelong disabilities. For example, many of the children with Down syndrome born in the 1950s and 1960s with congenital heart disorder had a very limited life expectancy, whereas those from later birth cohorts were operated on successfully and have joined the ranks of today's adults.

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