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Essay on The Aging Workforce
One out of three older workers would carry on working longer than otherwise intended if their employer offered a phased retirement program. Nevertheless, a lot of employers have yet to establish formal or informal arrangements such as shorter workweeks, lithe hours or the opportunity to try something new that would encourage older workers to delay full retirement. Among humans, the effects of aging vary from one individual to another.
The average life expectancy for Americans is around 75 years, almost twice what it was in the early 1900s. Although some people never reach this age, and others are beset with illnesses if they do, more and more people are living healthy lives well into their 90s and older. The study of the different aging processes that occur among individuals and the factors that cause these changes is known as gerontology. Geriatrics is a medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases in the elderly. One of the myths of aging is that intelligence diminishes with age. Early studies that used intelligence tests designed for children revealed that older people scored lower than young adults. However, these tests relied heavily on skills commonly used in school classrooms, such as arithmetic, and required the test to be completed within a specific time limit. Older people may require more time to answer questions, and more recent studies based on untimed tests and other measures of intellectual activity, such as problem solving and concept formation, show that there is relatively little decline in mental ability in healthy people at least up to age 70.
The aging brain does undergo a progressive loss of neurons, or nerve cells, but these losses represent only a small percentage of neurons in the brain. The speed of conduction of a nerve impulse declines with age, but it drops only about 15 percent over the age span from 30 to 85 years.......
