Public Opinion About Life and Death - Getting Older

Living to 100

National surveys of the adult population by the Alliance for Aging Research (AAR) have found that Americans would generally like to live longer. In 2001, 6 in 10 Americans (63 percent) said they would like to live to be 100 years old. Men (68 percent) and those aged 18 to 36 (69 percent) were more likely to want to live to be 100 years old. These findings are similar to AAR studies from 1991 and 1996.

Although a majority of Americans would like to live to be 100 years old, not all expect to get their wish. Nonetheless, 90 percent of people completing an online survey, and 60 percent of those who responded by telephone to a 2001 survey by the AAR, expected to live to be at least 80 years old. More than half (62 percent) of those surveyed online said they expected to live to be at least 90 years old. Earlier AAR surveys, conducted in 1991, 1992, and 1996, also showed that more than half of the respondents (56, 58, and 51 percent, respectively) thought they would live to be at least 80 years old.

Concerns about Aging

The aging of the baby boomers and the growing number of people living longer have focused much attention on concerns that come with aging. The 2001 AAR survey mentioned in the previous paragraph found that while Americans want to live longer, more than half of respondents to the online survey were concerned about living in a nursing home (51 percent) and disease (61 percent) in old age. Becoming a financial burden to their children (45 percent) and remaining attractive (46 percent) worried less than half of those surveyed online.

Nursing Homes Get Mixed Reviews

During 2001, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the Harvard School of Public Health, and The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a national survey about nursing homes. Among other questions, participants were asked about their willingness to move into a nursing home.

Of the 1,309 adults surveyed, slightly less than half (47 percent) said they would not like, but would accept, moving into a nursing home if they could not care for themselves at home, while 43 percent felt that moving into a nursing home would be totally unacceptable. Only 10 percent of the survey respondents felt they would accept it as the best thing for themselves. A majority felt that nursing homes are understaffed, have staff that are often neglectful or abusive of residents, and are lonely. About half (45 percent) felt that nursing homes make most people who move into them worse off than prior to the move. Further, 86 percent of respondents believed that "most people who stay in a nursing home never go home."