Aging

The drumbeat that America is now an aging society has become a cliché.  But remarkably little has been done to constructively examine how we can and should respond to the challenges that lie ahead.  Political gridlock, an indifferent private sector, and individuals’ reluctance to face new situations all conspire to resist change until a crisis emerges.  An aging society not only raises opportunities and problems for older Americans, but also for people of all ages as institutions change and new pressures are brought to bear in the areas of labor force changes, the distribution of resources across our society, health care needs, family relationships, and public infrastructure.

Research and policy analysis can contribute to heightening awareness of the challenges—and more importantly the potential impacts of various policy changes.  But part of this effort must also focus on how change can take place and what motivates people to act.

Latest Work

16 Oct 2019
Journal Article

High School Personality and Dementia

Personality phenotype has been associated with subsequent dementia in studies of older adults. This study used Project Talent data to examine whether personality during adolescence—a time when pre-clinical dementia pathology is unlikely to be present—confers risk for dementia in later life.
Image of students from the 1960s taking a test in a classroom
15 Apr 2019
Q & A

Checking in on Project Talent with AIR Vice President Susan Lapham

Project Talent is the largest, most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Since its launch in 1960, researchers have continued to collect data on the original participants and now its data are helping AIR researchers study possible risk and protective factors of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Project Talent Director and AIR Vice President Susan Lapham answered a few questions about the project, its history, and its potential influence.
Historical photo from project talent
20 Nov 2018
Journal Article

High School Personality Traits and 48-Year All-cause Mortality Risk: Results from a National Sample of 26,845 Baby Boomers

New research finds that high school students’ personality traits may be linked to a heightened or lessened risk of death around 50 years later. These findings, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, come from an in-depth analysis of AIR’s Project Talent, now in its 59th year.
Image of older adults
7 Sep 2018
Journal Article

The Relationship Between Adolescent Cognitive Ability and Dementia

As the U.S. deals with the growing number of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, a new study suggests that those at risk of developing dementia in later life could be identified in adolescence, giving them the opportunity to receive interventions to offset the risk.
1 Dec 2016
Brief

Community-Based Models for Aging in Place

The “graying of America” calls for new solutions to enable older Americans to age in place in their communities of choice. This issue brief reviews three community-based models—cohousing, villages, and livable communities—that are filling critical gaps in services directed at those who want to age in place.
1 Dec 2016
Brief

All Together Now: Integrating Health and Community Supports for Older Adults

With 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 each day, policy makers are facing the following critical questions about how to meet the requirements of an aging society. This brief is the first in a two-part series about policies and programs that provide resources and services for aging in place.
Infographic: Social Security Beneficiaries Enrolling by Age 65
14 Oct 2016
Infographic

Social Security Beneficiaries Enrolling by Age 65

This infographic shows that the proportion of Americans enrolling in Social Security by age 65 has dropped. This can cause confusion about Medicare enrollment, leading to costly penalties.
Medicare enrollment form
12 Oct 2016
Brief

Medicare Enrollment Maze Puts Older Americans at Risk for Financial Penalties and Coverage Gaps

The age when citizens can collect full Social Security retirement benefits is rising as people stay in the workforce longer, slowly fraying the enrollment link between Social Security and Medicare and increasing confusion. This brief addresses the problems that result and suggests solutions.
12 Oct 2016
Brief

Medicare Complexity Taxes Counseling Resources Available to Beneficiaries

As the next Medicare annual open enrollment period approaches, millions of Medicare beneficiaries must decide whether to change their coverage options. AIR researchers found that many beneficiaries are overwhelmed by Medicare’s complexity and could benefit from one-on-one counseling to help them make better choices.
Medicare enrollment form
6 Sep 2016
Brief

How Social Security and Medicare Reduce Inequality

Income inequality is substantial for people 65 and over, but less pronounced than it would be without Social Security and Medicare. A new brief offers a look at what the distribution of financial resources would be like in their absence, and addresses how proposed changes should be analyzed.
20 Jun 2016 | 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Event

Is Medicare Affordable? A Policy Discussion About Challenges and Options

The debate about Medicare’s future takes many forms. It is often linked to questions about financing – often couched in terms of the burdens on current and future taxpayers and the need to cut benefits. Are the current levels of benefits affordable over time? A set of issue briefs by AIR puts these questions into sharper focus. On June 20, 2016, experts in the fields of health policy, economics, journalism and government met for a lively debate and discussion on the challenges and options for Medicare’s future.
6 Jun 2016
Brief

Measures of Medicare's Finances Reconsidered: Introduction to the Series

The debate over Medicare’s future takes many forms. At its most basic, the issue is whether we can (or want to) afford Medicare. This series of issue briefs addresses key questions concerning the future of Medicare and how that will affect taxpayers and beneficiaries over time.
6 Jun 2016
Commentary

Is Medicare Really Unaffordable?

Each year when Medicare’s Trustees report comes out, as it will soon, pundits and politicians fixate on the projection of when Medicare funding will be eclipsed by Medicare spending. But, Marilyn Moon asks, don’t we also need to know who pays for Medicare? What the taxpayer burden is and how much program participants pay? Whether we can afford Medicare as the U.S. population ages?
17 Feb 2016
Commentary

Training the Aging Brain: Fact or Fiction?

In this commentary (part of our longform essay, Applying Social Science in the Real World), George Rebok discusses whether the results of cognitive stimulation and training transfer to both laboratory and real-life tasks.
Building blocks
17 Feb 2016
Spotlight

Applying Social Science in the Real World

Informing practice with the best research and making research more relevant to practice are easier said than done. Making a tangible difference in people’s lives is harder still. In this series of short commentaries, AIR experts reflect on ways to meet the challenge.
16 Feb 2016
Commentary

Applying Research to Practice on a Personal Level

In this commentary (part of our longform essay, Applying Social Science in the Real World), Marilyn Moon discusses the challenge of being a health and aging researcher arises when facing those issues personally.
Stressed woman
1 Dec 2015
Commentary

Rising Death Rates Bring New Meaning to Mid-Life Crisis for Americans—Especially White Women

A recent high-profile study of sharply rising mortality rates for some Americans brought to light the hazards of chronic stress. Principal researcher Kathryn Paez explores why the health of middle-aged white women in particular is suffering.
Project

Deaf/Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center

The Network of Consumer Hearing Assistive Technology Trainers (N-CHATT) is a partnership between AIR, Gallaudet University, and the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). N-CHATT trains people affected by hearing loss to support and empower individuals in their communities to find, evaluate, use, and advocate for hearing assistive technology.
30 Sep 2015
Report

Consumer Usability Testing in Five State-Based Marketplaces: Key Challenges and Best Practice Recommendations

Since January 1, 2014, consumers and small businesses have had access to new health insurance Marketplaces (or Exchanges). Consumers in every state and the District of Columbia are able to buy qualified health plans available through their state’s Marketplace. This report describes the results of AIR consumer website usability testing, which focused on how consumers navigate and understand key functions of the Marketplace websites in five states.
17 Jul 2015
Video

Long Story Short: What Can Help Deter Unnecessary Antibiotic Use in Nursing Homes?

Antibiotics can effectively treat common infections when used properly, but are often unnecessarily used on nursing home residents. Elizabeth Frentzel, AIR principal research scientist, describes the negative outcomes of inappropriately prescribing antibiotics and explains what can be done to better use antibiotics in nursing homes.
Medicare enrollment form
17 Jun 2015
Commentary

Improving Medicare Financing: Are We Up to the Challenge?

Medicare is nearly always a target of federal budget-cutting efforts. AIR Institute Fellow Marilyn Moon says we need a thoughtful debate about how to pay for healthcare for older adults and people with disabilities into the future. Her analysis addresses past and future changes to the program and revenue options.
George Rebok
10 Jun 2015
Video

Long Story Short: How Effective is Cognitive Training?

Older adults have become increasingly interested in cognitive training as a way to slow down or even reverse cognitive decline. In this video interview, George Rebok, AIR Institute Fellow, examines how effective cognitive training is and what people can do to prevent mental decline as they age.
3 Jun 2015 | 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Event

Cognitive Training for Older Adults: Does it Work?

The brain exercise industry, comprised of such companies as Lumosity and CogniFit, has positioned itself as the answer to cognitive decline, claiming its products have improved brain health. While it’s true that research says mental decline is not inevitable as we age and may be reversible for some people, controversy and confusion still surround the effectiveness of cognitive training in older adults. AIR invites you to a conversation on how policymakers, practitioners and researchers can work together to evaluate claims about the benefits of cognitive training.
17 Apr 2015
Spotlight

Medicare at 50: Conscientious Reform

As Medicare celebrates 50 years since its signing into law by President Lyndon Johnson, experts look at the challenges facing the program today.  While cost and other reforms are foremost in many policymakers' minds, experts caution that reforms need to keep the program's intended beneficiaries i

Older machine worker with younger trainee
13 Apr 2015
Index

AIR Index: Does 65 Truly Define “Older Americans”?

A range of policies serving America’s older citizens uses 65 as the cutoff age, but that number no longer means what it once did. This index highlights key facts from our issue brief, Is 65 the Best Cutoff for Defining “Older Americans”?, written by experts with AIR’s Center on Aging .
Birthday cake
6 Apr 2015
Commentary

Happy Birthday Medicare and the Affordable Care Act?

This is an anniversary year for both Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Medicare was passed 50 years ago in 1965 and the ACA was passed five years ago. These anniversaries bid us to consider lessons that can improve our healthcare system instead of accepting the benign neglect implicit in much of public discourse on health.
Older people in a classroom
30 Jan 2015
Brief

Is 65 the Best Cutoff for Defining “Older Americans?”

Do the issues that define “old age” really begin at 65? Although Americans are living longer, other changes in health status and workforce behavior could be used to argue that age 65 is too late to begin to worry about the challenges of an aging population.
18 Nov 2014
Brief

Cognitive Training for Older Adults: What Is It and Does It Work?

Older adults are more likely to fear losing their mental abilities than their physical abilities. But a growing body of research suggests that, for most people, mental decline isn’t inevitable and may even be reversible. It is now becoming clear that cognitive health and dementia prevention must be lifelong pursuits, and the new approaches springing from a better understanding of the risk factors for cognitive impairment are far more promising than current drug therapies. This brief analyzes the evidence.
23 Oct 2014
Spotlight

Project Talent Data Available to Researchers

In 1960, AIR launched Project Talent, the largest and most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Project Talent data are now available to researchers through the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging. AIR survey methodologists worked with University of Michigan colleagues to prepare the data and documentation for preservation, enhancement, and dissemination. The team transformed the data from a large number of files on 9-track tapes to a data file for each high school grade, documenting the data and creating tools to facilitate its use.
20 Oct 2014
Brief

Is Expanding Public-Financed Home Care Cost-Effective?

As American Baby Boomers retire and age, questions about how to deliver long-term care efficiently and control health care costs grow more important with each projected increase in health care needs. This brief examines recent research on both costs and outcomes, exposes fault lines in previous approaches to assessing consumer preferences in long-term care, and provides new evidence on the cost-effectiveness of current long-term care policy.
still image from whiteboard animation on senior's financial security
6 Oct 2014
Video

AIR Whiteboard: How Financially Well-Off Are America's Seniors?

After years of talking about America’s seniors as disproportionately poor, some commentators now characterize older Americans as better off than their younger counterparts. But many still live just above the poverty line, struggling to get by on dwindling savings while paying increasingly higher medical costs. This AIR Whiteboard, narrated by Center on Aging director Marilyn Moon, presents an overview of the economic challenges seniors face today.
Shadows
25 Sep 2014
Commentary

The Really Long Shadow—Studying the Lifelong Impacts of Early Life Experience

Learning more about the lifelong shadow of early life experiences is a challenge that can’t be met without longitudinal data. AIR and the University of Southern California are mining Project Talent's data to identify risk and protective factors for differential outcomes at older ages, to learn about the life trajectories of the baby-boom generation, and to align public policy and programs with research evidence and real-world opportunities and needs.
16 Sep 2014
Video

Long Story Short: Is 65 Still a Good Policy Benchmark for Aging?

Sixty-five has long been a benchmark age for public programs such as Social Security and Medicare, but many experts question whether it should be changed for today's aging society. In this video interview, Marilyn Moon, AIR Institute Fellow and director of AIR's Center on Aging, explains whether 65 is still a good milestone for aging, health, and retirement.
1950s computers
11 Jul 2014
Report

Locating Study Respondents After 50 Years

Many longitudinal and follow-up studies face a common challenge in locating participants over time. The 2011–12 Project Talent Follow-up Pilot Study examined the extent to which a geographically dispersed subsample of participants can be located again after decades with no contact, using relatively low-cost methods.
19 Jun 2014 | 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Event

Event Highlights: Making Research Relevant in Aging

The Center on Aging at AIR held a kick-off conference, which focused on how researchers can engage in the policymaking process, and encouraged participants to think creatively, constructively, and in concert. Themes discussed were the challenges faced by lower-income workers and the importance of Medicare to seniors.
5 Jun 2014
Commentary

An Open Letter to the New HHS Secretary: Medicare Challenges

Medicare expert and Institute Fellow Marilyn Moon offers her thoughts on program reforms and urges new HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to defend beneficiaries against unintended harm: “never forget that Medicare is a program for the elderly and disabled.”
Project

Addressing Unnecessary Antibiotic Use in Nursing Homes

High rates of antibiotic use have been linked to the growth of healthcare associated infections as well as multi-drug resistant organisms—both of which can be life threatening to elderly patients. Along with a team of experts in nursing home care and antibiotic stewardship, AIR developed a guide that will provide nursing homes with a set of easy to use tools to implement antimicrobial stewardship practices.
Older couple walking
6 May 2014
Brief

The Changing Economic Status of Seniors

Recently, attention has focused on who is prospering in the challenging economic times the U.S. has faced in this early part of the 21st century. Are seniors faring better than younger families? AIR expert Marilyn Moon discusses the issue.
Project

State Health Insurance Assistance Programs National Performance Report

The State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) provides free, in-depth, one-on-one insurance counseling and assistance annually to about 3 million Medicare beneficiaries, their families, friends, and caregivers. AIR developed and maintained the SHIP National Performance Report program from 2007 to 2014 to provide continuous monitoring by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and periodic reports to Congress and other stakeholders on SHIP performance and outcomes.
21 Sep 2012
Video

Marilyn Moon Demystifies Medicare Reform

Medicare reform is a center-stage issue in the presidential campaign. In this video interview, Marilyn Moon, an Institute Fellow at AIR, explains why the issue matters and which features of the federal health insurance program for Americans ages 65 and older and the disabled most need to be addressed.

28 Jun 2012
Commentary

Upholding the Affordable Care Act

AIR Institute Fellow Marilyn Moon provides commentary on the June 28, 2012 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act, which requires individuals to have health insurance. In her commentary, Moon notes that a shift in the health care debate to a more constructive examination of what needs fixing is now needed to move forward. 

Project

Project Talent

377,000 students. 1,300 schools. In 1960, AIR launched Project Talent, the largest and most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Now, as the original study participants move into retirement, Project Talent has become an important resource for understanding the aging process.
Project

No Place Like Home

The purpose of this project is to facilitate enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP of youth discharged from the Juvenile Justice Administration in Kansas and to evaluate the project on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

9 Dec 2009 | 10:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Event

Podcast: AIR Vice President Marilyn Moon discusses the future of Medicare

Medicare expert and AIR Vice President Marilyn Moon discusses with NPR the details of a proposed expansion of Medicare, cuts to the Home Healthcare program, and what they mean for consumers.
Project

Helping States Improve Their Medicare Services

AIR is supporting an effort to strengthen aspects of the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), a federally funded, state-based program that offers one-on-one counseling and assistance to Medicare beneficiaries and their families. SHIPs are funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Project

Medicare Part D Consumer Research

On behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), AIR studied the reasons why Medicare beneficiaries without creditable coverage do not enroll in Part D and how they can be encouraged to do so. The project consisted of a survey of beneficiaries without creditable coverage or Part D plans and interviews with health professionals. 

Project

Medicare’s Future: The Financial Impact of Policy Changes

AIR estimated the financial impact of selected Medicare policy changes on beneficiaries’ future cost-sharing requirements, out-of-pocket costs, and premiums, and on Medicare program solvency.
1 Nov 2007
Report

Prospects for the Social Safety Net for Future Low Income Seniors

This paper, presented at Forgotten Americans: The Future of Support for Older Low-Income Adults, examines health and income security issues among older Americans.