HIGHER' AGE LEVELS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 8

HIGHER' AGE LEVELS

LONGEVITY IN AUSTRALIA

EXPECTANCY OF 65 YEARS (Air Mail) SYDNEY, Dec. 21. In a study of greater longevity as it affects Australia, Mr Vivian C. Crockett, Director of the Department of Medical Sociology of the New Soutli Wales branch of the 8.M.A.. stated in the British Medical Journal of Australia that “fin ‘ young ’ Australia more than every third person is aged 40 years or more ” —a higher percentage than in the United States. The cause, said Mr Crockett, was not the falling birthrate, but greater medical control of disease. Millions of ageing people, for instance, used to die from diabetes. Now, they live to grow old with the aid of insulin.

Fifty years ago. in Australia, the average child leaving school at the age of 15 years had a further 34 years of life, dying at 49, but to-day. Mr Crockett said, the child still leaves school about the same' age. but he has a further 50 years of life, dying at 65. In 1881 the mean age in the Australian population was 20.08 years. At the latest census, 1933. it had increased to 27:69 years. Estimated Australian mean age to-day is around 29h years—nearly 10 years older than it was when Australians now in their fifties were born. , .. Mr Crockett believes young unmarried women would be more valuable post-war immigrants to Australia than would young unmarried men, who would only marry women who couid, in any case, have children by Australia’s excess marriageable males. Spouseless young women immigrants would later produce children additional to the normal increase of the population. There is a. need, he added, to adopt an education system for educating tor an average 50 years of life after leaving school. Average people, who now have 16 more years of life, compared with 50 years ago, need education which will encourage them to keep their minds agile by continuous exercise. From recent clinical studies it is now being contended that marked intolerance and conservatism are neither normal nor inescapable attitudes of old age. Society suggests t~, and expects from, the elderly certain modes of feeling, and tends to be scandalised when they show other feelings or behaviour. Yet there is often no psychological or biological for old people to think differently from those in the prime of life. Nor are the old necessarily beyond education or acquisition of new mental interests.