Photo by Mahmoud Yahya on Pexels.
Headlines about “most elderly people” say more about stereotypes than reality
The New York Times just published an article titled “What Most Elderly People Need.”
The article discusses community health workers who help people in rural areas who are financially and often medically challenged as they age. Those people certainly deserve support. It may even make sense to create variations of that support for cities and suburbs.
But why does the article say “most elderly people?” I realize it is hard to come up with a compact headline that refers to people who are challenged in different ways. Still, this article appears in the New York Times, a newspaper whose readership skews urban, educated, and far from poor. Few of those readers will qualify for, or even want, community outreach services.
Well-meaning people will glance at the article and conclude that anyone over 65 needs help.
That leads to ridiculous and annoying interactions. For instance, I was happily walking home from a barre class when a stranger approached me and asked, “Do you need help?” I asked why she thought I did. She said, “You look old. My mother is old. She needs help. So I figured you did too.” It had never occurred to her that older people differ widely in whether they need help.
I once saw an article about how Philadelphia is tough on older people. It turned out the city is tough on poor older people. In fact, any place is hard for people of any age who face financial challenges. I know plenty of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who would not trade their Philadelphia homes for a palace anywhere else. We see Philly as a great place to live at any age.
The worst thing about these articles is that they reinforce stereotypes.
An older person is assumed to be poor, isolated, and frail. Someone commented on the article suggesting that “older” people need extra help with insurance claims and payments.
Aside from the fact that traditional Medicare involves relatively little paperwork, especially if you have a good insurance agent, insurance problems are hardly unique to older people. Even medical professionals struggle with insurance when they are the patient rather than the caregiver. And not everyone over 65, or even over 80, is cognitively impaired.
People in their 80s and 90s are running companies and running marathons. They manage their finances just fine.
Stories that claim to be about “most old people” are almost always false. A well-known saying among geriatricians is, “If you’ve seen one 80-year-old, you’ve seen one 80-year-old.”
There is no need to accept these stereotypes or give more ammunition to employers, services, and businesses that profit from defining older people in outdated ways. “Most elderly people” actually describes far fewer people than we are led to believe.
