That society is aging is indisputable. Indeed, by 2050, there will be an estimated 438 million people in China aged over 65. By the same time, 20% of Japanese people will be over 80. Meanwhile, in Europe, around one in five EU citizens is over 65. It’s fair to say, therefore, that we as a society need to get better at understanding, supporting, and integrating our aging population if we’re to thrive in the future.

New research from Michigan State University explores which countries tend todo best for older people, especially in areas such as ageism.  The study finds that older adults tend to do better in China and Japan than they do in countries like Germany and the United States.

“Older adults are one of the only stigmatized groups that we all become part of someday. And that’s always struck me as interesting—that we would treat so poorly a group of people that we’re destined to become someday,” the researchers say. “Making more equitable environments for older adults are even in younger people’s self-interest.”

Aging well

Aging is an inevitable course of life, but given the rapidly changing demographics present across the world, it’s imperative that nations learn to handle the aging process as well as possible.  A crucial first step in this is understanding how the elderly are perceived in each country.

The researchers tested public sentiment and any biases towards the elderly via an Implicit Association Test that was administered to over 800,000 participants.  The test measures the strengths of our subconscious associations so can reveal any hidden biases we may have.

The data reveals that the kind of country, and the kind of culture it has, matters.  Those countries with a more collectivist orientation typically had a much more positive view towards the elderly, whereas countries with a more individualistic orientation did not.

“In some countries and cultures, older adults fare better, so a natural question we had was whether the people living in different countries might think about older adults and aging differently. And, maybe that explains why societies are so different in the structures put in place to support older adults,” the researchers explain.

So, collectivist countries, such as Korea, India, Brazil, and Japan, appear less biased towards older people as their cultures focus more on group cohesion and harmony than their more individualistic peers.

By contrast, countries such as Ireland, Australia, and the United States, tend to focus instead on independence and individual identity.  As such, these countries not only tend to have higher levels of age bias but also focus more on staying youthful and active.

“Countries that showed high bias also showed an interesting effect when you asked people how old they felt. In ageist cultures, people tended to report feeling particularly younger than their actual age,” the researchers say.  “We interpreted this as something called age-group dissociation—or, feeling motivated to distance yourself from that group. People do this is by identifying with younger age groups, lying about their age, and even saying that they feel quantitatively younger than they actually are.”

Internal division

The researchers also conducted a second experiment that focused purely on the United States to understand how agism fluctuates between the individual states.

This analysis reveals that the states most prone to agism were found in the South and Northeast of the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these states were also found to have both the worst outcomes and the lowest life expectancies for older adults.

“We found a strange pattern in which some popular retirement destinations tended to be higher in age bias, like Florida and the Carolinas,” the researchers explain. “Possibly, this could be due to the friction that occurs when there are large influxes and migrations of older adults to regions that are not always best suited to welcome them.”

What’s more, those states displaying higher levels of agism also appear to have much higher Medicare costs, less access to care, and lower levels of community engagement.  The higher levels of illness in these states are directly causing a higher demand for health resources, the authors explain.

The authors also argue that these states might also be worse at providing support and funding to older adults, as the attitude towards older people could undermine their efforts to provide easy access to this vital support.

“Both of our studies demonstrate how local environments affect people’s attitudes and the lives of older adults. We grow up in our environments and they shape us in pretty important ways and in ways we don’t even realize,” the researchers conclude.

“Being exposed to policies and attitudes at a country level can shape how you interact with older adults. At the state level in the United States, how you treat older adults has important implications for them—for example, their health and how long older people live—and even the economy, like how much money we spend on older adults’ health care.”