The Hastings Center

The Over 65 Blog

This is an archive. The Hastings Center is no longer currently maintaining this project.

  • Social Security: Don’t ‘scrap the cap’

    By I fancy that I stay abreast of what’s happening in the Social Security policy arena, so I was taken aback during a trip to Washington, D.C. to learn that a whole movement has developed to eliminate the bulk of Social Security’s 75-year deficit by scrapping the cap – that is, eliminating the earnings cap…

  • A New Direction for Geriatric Psychiatry: Wellness

    In his farewell address in May as the outgoing president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Dilip Jeste emphasized the need for a “positive psychiatry of aging.” Until recently, psychiatry has largely conceptualized health and well-being as the absence of illness and symptoms. In Jeste’s view, “quality of life and psychosocial functioning depend less on…

  • Retirement and Dementia

    On Monday, July 15, at 4:00 PM at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston, Carole Dufouil, director of research in neuroepidemiology at the Institut National de la santé et de la recherché médicale at the Bordeaux School of Public Health in France, presented her research on the relationship between retirement and dementia. In less…

  • Two Zorbas on Aging

    Summer reading recommendations are a feature of many publications. I have two for readers of Over65. For some reason, I didn’t read the novel Zorba the Greek when I was younger. Nor did I see the popular movie or musical based on the book. Fortunately, our book club chose it recently. In retrospect, perhaps it…

  • Honor Thy Mother and Father

    The Japanese have the right idea. Their Prime Minister recently announced his government would invest in the development of “nursing care robots” that help older people with everyday tasks. With just over 20% of its people over age 65, Japan has the largest proportion of elders of any country in the world–the corresponding number for…

  • Aging, Weight Gain, and Weight Loss

    Overweight, obesity, and physical inactivity are smoking’s close cousins in preventable causes of mortality, leading to over 300,000 deaths annually.  The societal costs of these conditions* may be as high as $400 billion per year.  Therefore, upon reading the May 6 blog post from Sissela Bok and the May 20 post from Steven Schroeder, it…

  • Aging, Stereotypes, and Reality

    I have heard for many years, informally and in scholarly journals, that ageism reigns in our society, and in particular that employers are biased against older workers. That last point is frequently made by many observers, who can cite a good bit of data showing that those over 50 who have lost jobs in the…

  • How can we fix long-term care insurance?

    This post extends the discussion of long-term care insurance recently initiated by Kenneth  Deitch. The prospective costs for long-term care are a big problem.  First, nursing home care is really expensive for those who end up needing it.  Second, the prospect of such an expense is likely to prevent people from making the best use…

  • More are retiring with mortgages and credit card debt

    Alicia H. Munnell  With a contracting retirement income system, rapidly rising health-care costs, and the prospect of long-term care expenses, one would have thought that people approaching retirement would be paying off their credit card debt and closing out their mortgages.  But surveys suggest that people are entering retirement with more debt than ever before…

  • Return of the Hero

    Blanched by anemia, Mary rested quietly in the hospital bed. Her pallor made her barely visible amid the bleached bed linens–she seemed a mere  shock of white hair against the pillowcase. Age 93, she’d visited the hospital a half-dozen times in as many months, shuttling between nursing home and hospital as many elders unwittingly do…