Extra Time. Camilla Cavendish

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СКАЧАТЬ risk of getting dementia is a fifth lower than it was 20 years ago.⁸ In 2000, the average age for receiving a diagnosis of dementia in the US was 80.7; by 2012, it had crept up to 82.4, even though doctors had got better at spotting it.⁹

      Experts are not sure why the incidence of dementia is dropping but the Framingham Heart Study, which has tracked 5,000 people over 60, suggests that rates of dementia have mirrored improvements in heart health.¹⁰ In the UK, dementia rates have fallen faster for men than for women, which may be because men previously smoked more. There will still be news headlines about dementia being on the rise but what’s growing is the total number of older people, not our own individual risk.

      The ‘Young-Old’: The New Kids on the Block

      The Japanese, whose society is now the oldest on the planet, caught up with the reality of Extra Time long ago. The group who are still hale and hearty and rushing around after grandchildren they call the ‘Young-Old’. Those who are frail and in need of support they call ‘Old-Old’.

      ‘The Young-Old are very active and healthy and productive – totally different from 30 years ago,’ says Professor Takao Suzuki, Professor of Gerontology at Tokyo’s J F Oberlin University. ‘Walking speeds are much faster, for example. The World Health Organization defines “old” as 65, but as gerontologists and geriatricians, our main concern is with the Old-Old, who are very different from a health standpoint.’

      Sketching energetically on his whiteboard, Professor Suzuki is, endearingly but disconcertingly, wearing a thin black cowboy tie over his pristine white shirt. He draws a matrix showing the Young-Old starting at 60, and Old-Old from 75 – but says the start date of becoming Old-Old can be much later than that. Professor Suzuki attributes Japan’s uniquely long-life expectancy to good medical care, prosperity and improved nutrition after the Second World War, when people could afford to eat far more protein, mostly fish. Consumption of carbohydrates, fat and sugar has barely changed, he says, as fast food outlets are still relatively few. Unlike Western experts, he worries more about under-nourished widows than obesity. (Some widows were not eligible for their husband’s full pension, he says, and have trouble getting to the shops to buy groceries.)

      The Oldest Stewardess in the World

      Bette Nash, 82, is telling me about the time she flew with Jackie Kennedy. It was 1965, and the glamorous wife of the former US president walked onto the flight where Bette was a stewardess. ‘We used to have to wear white gloves. I was pulling them on with my back turned and I heard this voice asking, was this flight going to Washington? She was real sweet, never asked for any attention.’

      The plane, Bette remembers, was a Constellation – very different to the Airbus she flies now. For Bette Nash is still working. She is probably the oldest stewardess in the world. American Airlines, her employer, recently threw a party to celebrate her 60th anniversary. Regular passengers on the Washington, DC–Boston shuttle bought her gifts.

      Bette says she has no intention of retiring: ‘I thrive on people.’ She talks fast and exudes energy: ‘If I’m ever off for a few days and think about stopping, as soon as I get my uniform back on and drive to the airport, it’s great. It’s the people who work for the airline and it’s the customers. I know their little needs. I know the commuter who likes his tomato juice plain in the winter and on ice in the summer. I feel so comfortable going to work.’

      Technology has changed in the past 60 years – Bette doesn’t have to handwrite the tickets any more – but people haven’t changed. ‘It’s being kind to people, and them being kind to you. A little love and kindness is what everyone needs.’

      The job is physically tiring, but Bette makes few concessions: ‘If I have free time I don’t sit down, I walk the cabin and talk to people. I do have a nap in the afternoon – I’ll admit that – but younger people get tired too.’ She gets up early in the morning and prepares a meal for her son before driving the hour to the airport. On the way home, she says, she does feel more tired. ‘Before, I might have gone to the store on the way home, and done other things; now I might just get gas.’

      What is her secret? She pauses. ‘When I think about it now, I think my goal in life is to keep moving,’ she chuckles. She may sit down to watch TV, but never for long. ‘There’s always something to do.’ She doesn’t follow an exercise regime, and admits to eating chocolate, but laughs: ‘I can still suck in my tummy.’ Almost without knowing it, she seems to have been following three of the tenets of the old-age lifestyle gurus: keep active, retain your sense of purpose and connect with people.

      Is Bette Nash old? She thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t feel like I’m an old person. I have a handicapped son, I don’t have the chance to feel old; his needs are so great. My sister has Parkinson’s and dementia and I look at her and I think she’s old, but she’s younger than I am.’

      Bette is not ‘old’ in the way we used to think of it. But her younger sister is. And this is where the debate gets confused. The stereotypes don’t fit any more. What we are witnessing is the decoupling of biological age from chronological age.

      New Stages Require New Signals

      When Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, created what was arguably the world’s first state pension in 1889, he set the pension age at 70. Few would ever draw it, since the average German lived to around 45.

      Today, life expectancy in Germany is 81. But Germany’s pension age is 65¹¹ and the average German gives up work at 62. Right across Europe, retirement ages are not keeping pace with life expectancy. In the UK, men leave the labour force earlier than they did in 1950.¹²

      If current trends continue, some of us living in Europe, parts of Asia and North America could spend a quarter of our lives retired. That is crazy.

      Lord Adair Turner chaired the independent UK Pensions Commission which recommended in 2005 that the British government should raise the pension age to 66 by 2030, and to 68 by 2050. He now thinks this wasn’t sufficiently far-sighted. The UK government now intends to raise the pension age to 67 by 2028, but he thinks ‘this won’t be nearly enough. In 1950, average male life expectancy at 65 was 12 years. By the time we were looking at it, in 2003, it was 20 years. Life expectancy at 65 could be another 35 years by the time we reach mid-century. We should have started increasing the pension age years before.’

      Actuaries, he says, simply didn’t realise how fast life expectancy was growing: ‘There was a dominant hypothesis about a limit to life. They kept producing curves showing life expectancy growing, but then tailing off. Eventually we said there’s no reason to tail off.’ Why did they get it so wrong? ‘Smoking. The tobacco companies were mass murderers,’ says Turner – and no one thought their power would wane.

      Pensions are one of many signals which influence how we see older people – and ourselves. These signals need updating.

      What it means to be 65 has changed utterly. In the 1950s, a 65-year-old woman in Britain could expect to live a further 14 years.¹³ Today, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, the average 65-year-old woman can look forward a further 23.4 years.¹⁴

      Yet 65 is now the age at which many institutions impose a concept of old age upon their citizens. It’s the moment when Germans, Swedes, Canadians, Australians and Brits can officially retire, and Americans become eligible for full Medicare (federal health insurance). It’s a tipping point for financial advisers, who will often start switching your pension portfolio into bonds when you hit your 50s. And ‘65+’ is often the maximum age bracket cited in questionnaires, with no other boxes to tick – as if it’s the beginning of the end.

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