A study examined trends in intrinsic capacity, a comprehensive measure of cognitive, locomotor, psychological and sensory capacities that was recently developed by the World Health Organization. The results indicate that older adults in England today seem to be experiencing far higher levels of physical and mental functioning than did previous generations at the same age.
Paywalled article: Seventy really may be the new sixty for English baby boomers | Nature Aging
The original research that the article is writing about: (Open Access)
Cohort trends in intrinsic capacity in England and China
To understand how the health of older adults today compares to that of previous generations, we estimated intrinsic capacity and subdomains of cognitive, locomotor, sensory, psychological and vitality capacities in participants of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Applying multilevel growth curve models, we found that more recent cohorts entered older ages with higher levels of capacity, while subsequent age-related declines were somewhat compressed compared to earlier cohorts. Trends were most evident for the cognitive, locomotor and vitality capacities. Improvements were large, with the greatest gains being in the most recent cohorts. For example, a 68-year-old participant of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing born in 1950 had higher capacity than a 62-year-old born 10 years earlier. Trends were similar for men and women and were generally consistent across English and Chinese cohorts. Possible causes include broad societal influences and improvements in medical care.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00741-w
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