WHAT ARE SOME BASIC FACTS ABOUT ETHNIC AND MINORITY AGING?
American Psychological Association
Table of Contents
Why Practitioners Need Information
- In the future, the older population will be much more racially and ethnically diverse. The current older population is predominantly White. However, by the middle of the next century, the number of older Black persons will more than triple, increasing their proportion of the total older adult population from 8 to 10 percent. More dramatically, the Hispanic population will increase nearly 11 fold, rising from less than 4 percent of today's older adults to nearly 16 percent.
- Achieving a healthier America depends on significant improvements in the health of those who are at highest risk of premature death, disease, and disability, which include many minority older people. Poor income and low literacy, which are associated with minority status, are important risk factors for the major chronic illnesses. For example, the risk of death from heart disease is more than 25 percent higher for low income people than it is for the overall population. People in families with incomes of less than $13,000 a year are twice as likely as the total population to be limited in major activities of daily living because of health. Activity of daily living limitations are 4 times more common among people with 8 or fewer years of education than among those with 16 years or more.
- There is a robust correlation between lower educational attainment and low income. The fastest growing group of older Americans are the poor and the octogenarians (ages 85+ years). These groups use a higher percentage of the overall health budget and have longer hospital stays and more physician visits.
- Each minority group of older adults has a unique history which, in many cases, has been influenced by discrimination. There are, of course, many differences among individuals within each group.
