How to be happy in your old age
A longitudinal study has revealed many reasons people should look forward to growing old here,
TILDA — The Irish Longitudinal study on ageing — which collects all sorts of information on the health, economic and social circumstances of our over-50s, turned 10 this week. Designed originally to provide an evidence-based insight into ageing in Ireland, it’s 8,500 participants have for the past decade undergone an in-depth interview every two years and a comprehensive health assessment every four years. This is in order to track changes in their physical, emotional and financial wellbeing over that time, and so assess where our older citizens are at, and support and plan for a positive experience of ageing for this and future generations. And all sorts of very interesting things have turned up in the data.
The really good news is that our quality of life — as perceived and reported by the participants in what is genuinely far-reaching and groundbreaking research — continues to improve year on year as we age over 50. So Irish people are getting happier as they get older.
And in fact, our quality of life peaks between the ages of 65 and 70 — making those five years in many ways the most valuable of your life. So think on that — you really do want to get to that point if you can, and in fairly good nick.
This ‘sweet spot’ agewise is presumably because ageing, in many ways, is a positive process. You grow in confidence. You’ve gained coping skills and maturity that make life easier. Certainly, if you are part of the babyboomer generation that our over-50s belong to, you mostly grow in wealth, with the average weekly disposable income within the group now being €767, far in excess of that of most young Irish people.
Our collective health as a nation, and thus within that age group, has also improved, so this is the healthiest ever generation of older people.
Those particular five years between 65 and 70 are ones where you’re often first retired and have — possibly for the first time since your youth — more leisure time, but you still enjoy probable good health and a degree of financial security, so they are, in fact, the best years of your life. That is something to look forward to, and a nice antidote to our current obsession with staying forever young.
Although, of course, those golden years may be shunted forward for the rest of us who won’t be retiring until we’re 68, and who will also likely live longer than our current crop of over-50s.
It’s important to recognise that there are really positive aspects to ageing, because another nice fact thrown up by the study is that having a negative attitude towards ageing has a genuine adverse effect on both your physical and cognitive health. So when measured after two years, those with negative attitudes around ageing had, for example, a slower walking speed and a poorer cognitive function as compared to those with a positive attitude. These differences held true even when corrected for other conditions and medications that might affect cognitive or physical well-being, so they are genuinely significant.
So literally that old adage that you’re as young as you feel is correct, with those who felt good about ageing doing much better than those who felt badly about it. So do stay positive, people. This is really good news for the likes of me who preferred my 30s to my 20s and my 40s to my 30s. I’m of the mind that every decade so far has got better, so on that basis alone I’m looking forward to my 50s, which will actually mean I’ll only be about 25 when they hit, if you follow my logic.
Tilda was set up to assess both what was happening to our over-50s but also to plan around the needs of our ageing population, where one in five of us will be over 50 by 2030. And it has looked in some detail at everything from physical illness, such as heart disease, to how much time we spend with our grandchildren. Quite a lot, is the answer to latter question, with nearly half of the over-50s providing some form of care for their grandchildren.
And Tilda’s findings have been used already as the evidence for multiple policy changes around positive ageing nationally. So, for example, Tilda discovered the walking speed of onein-three older adults isn’t fast enough to cross the road in the time allotted at signal crossings. It led to local authorities assessing signal timing settings and led to public safety campaigns with the Road Safety Authority.
And when Tilda found that the prevalence of atrial fibrillation — an irregular heartbeat and a common cause of stroke and heart attack — was up to 20pc in men aged over 80 years, and one-third were unaware of it and one-third were incorrectly treated, it led to the Irish Heart Foundation starting a national awareness campaign about the issue. So these findings are leading to positive changes being implemented already.
Other interesting health stats revealed include one in 10 of us will have diabetes over the age of 50. And almost two-thirds of us will have high blood pressure — although nearly half will be unaware of it.
If the Tilda study tells us anything, though, it tells us that Ireland is a reasonably good place to grow older in, with older people having a good quality of life, reasonable health and a sense of connectedness to family and community. In fact, it tells us that Ireland may in fact be a better place for older, rather than younger, people.
It also tells us that health and financial security are key factors in enjoying a good quality of life. And that the longer you enjoy the former, the more likely you are to be content in your older years.
The secret to happiness in ageing, I think, is not necessarily to do with living longer but instead is about living better — keeping well and keeping busy. For my money, I intend to embrace growing old as disgracefully as possible. And based on Tilda’s findings, I’m pretty confident about growing old in Ireland currently. Bold age, I mean old age … bring it on!
‘Ireland is a reasonably good place to grow older in, with older people here having a good quality of life’