‘70’ Really is the ‘New 60’ – Aging Adults Function Better Today Than Previous Generations in Both Body and Mind

January 26, 2025 journo

Credit: Jan de Keijzer (Unsplash, public domain)

Age-related declines experienced by older adults have significantly slowed down, according to a new study published last month in Nature Aging.

Improvements in education, nutrition, and sanitation across the 20th Century likely played key roles in the improvements of cognitive, locomotive, psychological, and sensory capacities.

The study—from the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health—uncovered significant improvements in the health of older adults in England when compared to previous generations.

Instead of measuring health as the presence or absence of disease, researchers applied a new approach that examined trends in people’s functioning – their cognitive, locomotive, psychological, and sensory abilities.

Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the new analysis found that older adults today experience higher levels of physical and mental functioning than previous generations did at the same age.

“These improvements were large,” said author of the study Professor John Beard, PhD, of Columbia University.

“For example, a 68-year-old born in 1950 had a similar capacity to a 62-year-old born a decade earlier, and those born in 1940 had better functioning than those born in 1930 or 1920.” Beard noted, “If we had compared someone born in 1950 with someone born in 1920, we would have likely observed even greater improvements.”

Beard says that medical advances—such as joint replacements and better treatments for chronic conditions—were also likely to be contributing factors.

“We were surprised by just how large these improvements were, particularly when comparing people born after World War II with earlier-born groups.” said Beard.

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“But there is nothing to say we will continue to see the same improvements moving forward, and changes such as the increasing prevalence of obesity may even see these trends reverse. It is also likely that more advantaged groups will have experienced greater gains than others. But overall, the trends were very strong and suggest that, for many people, 70 really may be the new 60.”

Aging expert Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois praised the study, stating, “This is a powerful article. It shows that intrinsic capacity—what really matters to people as they age—is inherently modifiable. With this evidence, we see that medical science can enhance intrinsic capacity, providing a hopeful message for the future.”

Beard and his colleagues undertook similar analyses in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). They found similar trends, although this analysis was limited by the much shorter follow-up period in the Chinese study compared to the English study.

Further studies in other countries could confirm if the same trends could be measured across different populations.

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(The research was supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales; Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London; the National Social Science Foundation of China; and the National Institute on Aging.)

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