age

Examples of age in the following topics:

• The Middle Years

  • Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age.
  • Census lists middle age as including people aged from 35 to 54, while developmental psychologist Erik Erikson argues that middle adulthood occurs from the age of 40 until 65.
  • Middle-aged adults often show visible signs of aging such as the loss of skin elasticity and the graying of hair.
  • However, people age at different rates and there can be significant differences between individuals of the same age.
  • However, the majority of middle-age people in industrialized nations can expect to live into old age.

• Dividing the lifespan

  • Human life is often divided into various age spans, like the following:
  • In many countries, such as Sweden, adulthood legally begins at the age of eighteen.
  • This is a major age milestone that is marked by significantly different attitudes toward the person who undergoes the transition.

• Effects of Aging on the Integumentary System

  • Intrinsic and extrinsic aging describe cutaneous aging of the integumentary system primarily involving the dermis.
  • Intrinsic aging and extrinsic aging are terms used to describe cutaneous aging of the skin and other parts of the integumentary system.
  • As skin ages, it becomes thinner and more easily damaged.
  • Because of this, extrinsic aging is often referred to as photoaging.
  • Photodamage implies changes beyond those associated with aging alone.

• Age Structure, Population Growth, and Economic Development

  • With knowledge of this age structure, population growth can be more accurately predicted.
  • For example, the population of a country with rapid growth has a triangle-shaped age structure with a greater proportion of younger individuals who are at or close to reproductive age.
  • This results in a column-shaped age structure diagram with steeper sides.
  • The leftmost diagram (representing the age structure of a rapidly-growing population) indicates that the number of individuals decreases rapidly with age.
  • The slow-growth model shows that the proportion of individuals decreases steadily with age.

• Socially Constructed Interpretations of Aging

  • While aging, itself, is a bio-social process, the ways people and cultures interpret ages (e.g., "old," "young," "mid-life") and the ways these interpretations are distinguished by varied biological age markers vary dramatically.
  • In Western societies, where youth is highly valued, people are considered "old" at much younger ages than in Eastern societies where age is often seen to beget wisdom.
  • This emphasis on youth translates into considerable expenditures on makeup, cosmetics, and surgeries to hide signs of aging, particularly among women, but also among men.
  • The activities that are expected of one at different ages is also socially constructed and relative to culture.
  • While age will eventually take its toll on everyone, the association of vigor with youth is a cultural construct and does not necessarily reflect the reality of biological aging.

• The Social Construction of Aging

  • The social construction of aging entails the creation of social norms and symbols that encapsulates the aging process.
  • Rather, cultures imbue youth and age with meanings.
  • There is thus no such thing as a universal age for being considered old .
  • Many Eastern societies associate old age with wisdom, so they value old age much more than their Western counterparts.
  • Of course, interactions involving the perception of age must then vary by culture, as different cultures ascribe the notion of age with different values.

• The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

  • According to the Symbolic Interactionist Perspective, old age, and aging, are socially constructed and determined by symbols that resemble aging in social interactions.
  • Rather, cultures imbue youth and age with particular meanings.
  • Given the socially constructed nature of age, there are certain behaviors that people typically associate with certain age groups as being "appropriate" or "acceptable" .
  • Many Eastern societies associate old age with wisdom and value old age much more than their Western counterparts.
  • Given the socially constructed nature of age, there are certain behaviors that people typically associate with certain age groups as being "appropriate" or "acceptable. " Is this old woman challenging any conventional perceptions about how women of a certain age should behave?

• Statistical Literacy

  • They reported the mean household income and the median age of theatergoers.
  • The distributions of income and age of theatergoers probably have positive skew.
  • Therefore the mean is probably higher than the median, which results in higher income and lower age than if the median household income and mean age had been presented.

• Introduction to Bivariate Data

  • The pairs of ages in Table 1 are from a dataset consisting of 282 pairs of spousal ages, too many to make sense of from a table.
  • Another example of information not available from the separate descriptions of husbands and wives' ages is the mean age of husbands with wives of a certain age.
  • Finally, we do not know the relationship between the husband's age and the wife's age.
  • The x-axis represents the age of the husband and the y-axis the age of the wife.
  • Scatter plot showing wife's age as a function of husband's age

• Age

  • The city of Pittsburgh offers an intriguing case study of the effects of an aging population on a city.
  • Chronological aging may also be distinguished from "social aging" (cultural age-expectations of how people should act as they grow older) and "biological aging" (an organism's physical state as it ages).
  • Many societies in Western Europe and Japan have aging populations.
  • While aging is often associated with declining health, current research suggests there are some things people can do to remain healthy longer into old age.
  • Discuss the impact of aging on a person's life and the demand it places on health care