Everyday ageism – stereotyping or discriminating against people because of their age – looms large for people as young as 50. 93 percent of older adults say they have faced some form of age discrimination, reports the AARP. News headlines question whether President Biden is too old to run for a second term, and the mental health of Sen. Diane Feinstein. Women disproportionately suffer from age-related bias, especially at the workplace. Moreover, ageism has harmful healthcare impacts.

Dr. Julie Allen, Adjunct Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Dr. Allen was the lead researcher on the recent JAMA paper: “Experiences of Everyday Ageism and the Health of Older US Adults.”; Dr. Louise Aronson, geriatrician, and professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her book “Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life.”; Paul Kleyman, national coordinator at Journalists Network on Generations, and editor of Generation Beats Online; Patricia M. D’Antonio, Vice President, Policy and Professional Affairs The Gerontological Society of America, and Executive Director, Reframing Aging Initiative

At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, July 15, speakers – Dr. Julie Allen, Adjunct Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan; Dr. Louise Aronson, geriatrician, and professor of medicine at UC San Francisco; Paul Kleyman, national coordinator at Journalists Network on Generations, and editor of Generation Beats Online; Patricia M. D’Antonio, Vice President, Policy and Professional Affairs The Gerontological Society of America, and Executive Director, Reframing Aging Initiative – discussed age-related bias, and its physical and mental impacts on older adults.

“A picture is worth a thousand words – a photograph of Dianne Feinstein on the cover of New York magazine makes her look like a petrified mummy and that’s the point. The article questions her cognitive ability to serve as California’s senator. Then there is the photo of Nancy Pelosi on the editorial page at The New York Times,again with that wizard look of advanced age, questioning her political judgment. There’s a drumbeat of voices blaming gerontocracy referencing Boomer gerontocracy for the ills of the Democratic Party,” said Sandy Close, Director of Ethnic Media Services, to set the tone of the discussion that followed.

The topic was ageism and whether we’re seeing amidst so many divisions in our society, a new wave of scapegoating older adults with no woke warriors there to defend them, nor is this confined to politics. Elder Asians often seem to be singled out for hate crimes. There’s also the worry that if vaccines become too scarce health care will adopt a triage approach prioritizing younger workers. How much do we discriminate against the old? Does this have harmful health impacts, what’s behind it?

Dr. Julie Allen took the first swing. “It is well established that major instances of age-based discrimination are linked to quite a broad array of poor health outcomes amongst older adults. Things like being forced to retire or move out of one’s home before one is interested in doing so but there’s another form of ageism which I call everyday ageism.

“Everyday ageism refers to sort of the routine ageism that older adults encounter in their day-to-day lives, things like birthday cards with jokes about growing older or the plethora of anti-grade, anti-wrinkle, and anti-aging products, comments like you look so great for your age or people assuming that older adults have memory issues or hearing loss and also instances when older adults believe some of these stereotypes about aging and older adults themselves.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot less research about the potential negative health implications of everyday ageism when compared to other-isms – racism, sexism, homophobia, and that was really the motivation for this research which was recently published in the JAMA Network.

“I partnered with the national poll on healthy aging at the University of Michigan to determine the prevalence of everyday ageism amongst older U.S. adults, to identify groups that may experience more everyday ageism than others, and to investigate whether everyday ageism may be related to health.

“In Information collected from a nationally representative sample of 2,048 U.S. adults between the ages of 50 and 80 in December of 2019, right before COVID, we found over 93% of U.S. adults in this age range reported that they regularly experienced one or more form of everyday ageism on a regular basis.

“With significant frequency we found that some population subgroups experience more everyday ageism than others such as those 65 to 80 when compared to older adults between the ages of 50 and 64. Those of lower socioeconomic status, and those who spent more time every day watching television, browsing the Internet, or reading magazines, differences by race and ethnicity were a bit surprising.

“Non-Hispanic White adults reported the most everyday ageism followed by Hispanic and Latino adults, and non-Hispanic black adults reported the lowest amount. We were unable to calculate reliable estimates for other racial and ethnic groups due to the small numbers within our sample.

“We looked at four, two general indicators of physical health, and two of mental health, and found that higher levels of everyday ageism were associated with increased risk of evaluating one’s physical health as fair or poor when compared to good, very good, or excellent. We found that higher levels were associated with having multiple chronic health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. Evaluating one’s mental health as fair or poor and showing signs of depression, we can’t say definitively that everyday ageism causes poor health.

“Everyday ageism may serve as a chronic source of stress in the lives of older adults and this is believed to contribute to accelerated aging, increase risk for a broad array of chronic diseases, as well as premature mortality.

“Everyday ageism affects health care seeking. If older adults believe stereotypes that loneliness or depression or health problems are inevitable parts of aging, they will be less likely to seek care or follow health care provider’s recommendations.

“Studies have shown that older adults who hold more negative self-perceptions of aging are less likely to take medications as prescribed. Alternatively, if older adults feel patronized or misunderstood or actively discriminated against, when they do seek health care services, they may be less likely to do so. This could be based on their interactions with their health care providers or the front office staff, this could be the way messages about health are framed or it could be systemic issues such as procedures for making appointments.

“Ageism is embedded within our healthcare system in the U.S. as well as in other countries such that older adults receive poor quality care than their younger counterparts and these range from Individual assumptions amongst healthcare providers about what type of situations warrant treatment versus those that don’t. Research shows that older adults are less likely to receive medically indicated diagnostic tests than their younger counterparts.

“Policies of healthcare systems and insurance companies regarding how healthcare services and resources are allocated on a regular and consistent basis, deny older adults essential medical procedures, for example, organ transplants and some of these are life-saving procedures.

“The digital divide, the 15-minute healthcare physician visits, and then finally older adults are consistently and regularly excluded from clinical trials, oftentimes due to age alone,” said Dr Allen.

Dr Louise Aronson who was a Pulitzer finalist in 2020 for her new book discussed the impact of ageism which disproportionately affects women.

“It turns out women get older in larger numbers than men. The most recent data we have is 2016 and for people ages 65 and up, there were 79 men for every 100 women. That varies a lot in people who are ages 65 to 74, it’s 88 men per 100 women, but if you look at people age 85 and older they’re only 53 men per 100 women.

“This may have changed a little bit with COVID because COVID killed older people disproportionately and more older people are women, so new numbers may change. Also the gap is getting a bit smaller in the United States but for all the wrong reasons, it’s because women are dying more because they are more obese, there’s more women smoking, and there’s more women drinking too much.

“The second reason is that that ageism disproportionately affects women. There is something called ‘gendered ageism,’ the intersectional disadvantage of where sexism and ageism can happen together.

“A third big category part of this is financial. Women make less money than men. Generally on average 82 cents on the dollar for all ages but there’s actually a triple threat for some women so if you are a woman of color and an older woman, you have racism, sexism, and ageism together. They start out with lower earnings, less contribution to their pension from their earnings, and miss time on maternity leave. They miss time on sick childcare as we saw hugely during pandemic. They miss time taking care of older relatives often. All these things add up to a double or triple jeopardy for women financially. They enter old age with less money and fewer resources.

The second part of gendered ageism is something called lookism. There is this incredible statistic where they say localism impacts women under age 35. There’s a lot of pressure for women to look youthful. The hair dye, the cosmetic surgeries, etc. As a woman who used to do that and doesn’t do it anymore, it’s stressful not doing it also because you feel like everybody else is doing it, you look older.

“It can erode women’s self-esteem and confidence which affects their performance but on the flip side they’re also evaluated as being less valuable, less competent, and are more likely to be fired with the same qualifications and performance reviews as men.

“The third difference is that women and men have different burdens as they age. Women are much more likely to be informal caregivers, unpaid caregivers, in fact most caregiving in this country is done by women by informal caregivers.

“Race and ethnicity also play in here because depending on cultural attitudes traditional attitudes, and gender inequity in the household, there may be much more burden placed on the woman over time.

“The fourth thing is their different health experiences of old age. Women are more likely to become old, that means men are more likely to die, but women are more likely to have many chronic diseases as they grow old, to have functional limitations and disabilities, to have pain to have a lower well-being.

“As people move into the older ages, they are more likely to have loneliness, and we know loneliness is bad for the health. It’s often because they have outlived their partner, their husband, and as a result they have cared for the husband prior to his death are more likely to be institutionalized in institutions that have lower quality of care. Women of color are more likely to be in those lower quality institutions.

“In the United States, there is one good statistic, gender inequality in health as we age is influenced most strongly by two things – level of education and healthy lifestyle. You could go back and get more education in your old age, that’s actually a great way of keeping the brain healthy, but it’s probably the healthy lifestyle that makes the bigger difference. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables, not so much meat, not so much processed foods, and most importantly of all, being physically active,” said Dr Aronson.

Paul Clayman spoke next about ageism in politics.

“I’ve aged with the topic of Aging. Prejudice is a cockroach that never stops regrouping and coming back, like Putin’s troops. Age bias is particularly pernicious. President Biden deserves scrutiny and criticism but based on his merit, not on his age, much less, all the speculation about his ability years from now if he gets reelected.

“Prejudice always goes beyond one person or situation that’s cited. Multiple stories questioning Biden’s age or Feinstein’s have jumped to calls for sweeping aside leaders in their 70’s and 80’s because they form a gerontocracy of people presumed to be out of touch with the country’s needs.

“This ugly term literally means a rigid clutch of old people in charge of holding on to the status quo. Everyone wants change but articles like the one in New York magazine about Senator Feinstein who’s 88, leap from speculation about her apparent memory issues, to blaming all the old leaders for gridlock in Washington. Well, how about the chairman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, that would be Bernie Sanders, age 80? He went on a Fox News debate recently and crushed GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, or consider representative Benny Thompson, 74, who’s been so powerful in chairing the January 6 Committee.

“Maybe the fault lies more in our lack of imagination on practical, if long-term solutions, like on voting rights and unfettered money in politics, and fighting partisan gerrymandering rather than catering to the intolerance of ageism.

“Journalists especially in ethnic media have an opportunity to bring a new perspective to our ailing and aging country that includes exploring alternatives that fit our new age of mass longevity.

“What we’ve been hearing average life expectancy, even in developing countries, is now almost two full generations longer than people who lived only a hundred years ago. That changes everything, yet ageism in the United States infects vital growth areas of our society. It’s not only in overt advertising for things like anti-aging creams but in underlying systems in health care, employment discrimination, or mainstream media’s political and economic reporting. Too many economic and political leaders still see our rapidly aging population as a looming budgetary burden.

Patricia M. D’Antonio spoke about how we move on from ageism at both an individual and societal level.

“The reframing aging initiative is a long-term evidence-based social change initiative designed to improve the public’s understanding of aging and the many contributions of older people to society. Through this evidence we will be able to counter ageism and improve support for policies and programs that support us all as we age.

“We worked with a research partner, The Frameworks Institute, to conduct research. We had more than 12,000 people, representative sample of Americans, and what we wanted to learn is what exactly did the public think about aging as compared to how aging experts feel about aging.

“What we learned is that ageism was not considered a concern in public opinion. Those who work in aging found that ageism was important. People think differently about aging and we can drive people towards those split-second decisions about aging.

“Whenever there’s a challenge, contributions of all of us, as we age, including older people, can provide the support to address the challenges. We have a collective responsibility for society and we’re all interconnected, we want to bring that to mind in our communications.

“It’s important for us to highlight and tell a more complete story about aging that shows creative solutions that we are highly innovative. That will get people to think about aging in a much more complete way. It’s important to call out ageism when we hear it and understand what ageism is,” said D’Antonio.