Study Reveals How Education, Nutrition, and Sanitation Mitigate Aging Effects

A new study from the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health reveals significant improvements in the health of older adults in England when compared to previous generations. Rather than considering health through the presence or absence of disease, the study, published in Nature Aging, applied a new approach that examined trends in people’s functioning – their cognitive, locomotor, psychological, and sensory capacities.

Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the study 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 John Beard, MBBS, PhD, Irene Diamond Professor of Aging in Health Policy and Management in the Butler Columbia Aging Center of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and author of the study. 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.”