Are We Doing Enough For Our Elderly Population?

As we go through life, we do everything that we can to prepare for our autumn and winter years. That is, our retirement. We work as hard as we can our whole lives, saving our money and putting aside cash in various accounts and investments to ensure that we can have a nest egg for those later years of freedom. The problem that we are facing, however, isn’t that we aren’t saving enough money for our retirement years. It’s that we aren’t quite doing enough right now for the elderly population today.

The life expectancy for human beings has increased dramatically over the past few years, with the average life expectancy into the eighties instead of the sixties, as it was thirty years ago. Given that the aging population are around longer than ever, we have a responsibility to ensure that they are being treated fairly, that they have opportunities to be educated on current technologies and we are vigilant about those who are the most vulnerable. There are more than enough stories in the media currently about those abused in a nursing home, and it’s up to the adults of today to ensure that these things are not happening. The issue that most people have is balancing saving for retirement and continuing after age 65 for up to 20 more years. Most people don’t save enough for that, which means that the retirement age for the population gets lifted even higher, pushing back pensions and for those in poorer communities, sometimes meaning that they miss out on a pension entirely.

It’s our responsibility to ensure that we adapt to the growth of the aging population in society today, and currently there are warning signs that this isn’t happening. Everything is moving toward automation, and while this puts us lightyears ahead, this means that those in the elderly community are often left bewildered and confused about things like buying tickets, paying for food items and even posting parcels. Much of our aged population are not as versed on automated machinery for purchases as the younger generations are, so there needs to be provisions put in place for those who need extra help.

There are plenty of volunteer schemes in place so that people can help those more in need, but not enough people are signing up to those. This leaves a large slice of the population lonely, vulnerable and sometimes without the basic necessities. This kind of vulnerability also leads to instances of crimes against the elderly, playing on confusion and loneliness in order to scam money from them. It’s not something that is reported about enough, but if we can all come together as a community to care for our elders, we can reduce their risk of being exposed to being taken advantage of.

We are living longer and working for longer than ever; we need to make sure that we are taking care of the vulnerable members of society if we hope to continue to keep on as a community.