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LiveScience
More and more Americans are enjoying longer lives, but they are also getting fatter and paying more for housing in old age, according to a new report from U.S. health officials.
Two years ago, there were about 40 million people over 65 in the United States, accounting for 13 percent of the total population. Over the next two decades, that number is expected to grow to 72 million, meaning nearly 1 in 5 Americans will be seniors by 2030. But better life expectancy might not translate to better quality of life, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report warns.
Obesity is a major cause of preventable diseases and has been linked to a wide range of health problems, including depression, in older people, and statistics show seniors' waistlines are getting wider. From 1988 to 1994, 22 percent of Americans age 65 and over were obese, with that figure ballooning to 38 percent by 2010, NIH officials said.
At the same time, Americans over 65 are burdened with rising housing costs. In 1985, about 30 percent of seniors spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities. By 2009, 40 percent were spending almost a third of their income or more on housing, the NIH report said.
But on a positive note, the report found that many older Americans might be better off financially than they were four decades ago. Between 1974 and 2010, the percentage of older people living below the poverty line shrunk from 15 percent to 9 percent; the proportion of low-income seniors dropped from 35 percent to 26 percent; and the percentage of seniors with high income rose from 18 percent to 31 percent, according to the NIH.
The NIH report also found that older women have joined the workforce in increasing numbers since the 1960s. In 1963, 29 percent of women ages 62-64 worked outside the home — a figure that increased to 45 percent by 2011. Those percentages also rose for women ages 65-69 (17 percent in 1963 to 27 percent in 2011), and 70 and older (6 percent to 8 percent).
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No comments yet? This illustrates our apathy toward responsible health behaviors. Obesity is fast becoming the norm, even among health professionals. We Americans lack incentives to exercise and reduce consumption. About the "link" between obesity and depression: correlation does not mean causation. Thanks, America, for tolerating my unhealthy behavior. I can enjoy my Big Mac with the assurance that you will pay for treatment of my heart problems, hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and other looming health issues.
God your comments are such a broken record. As we age metabolism slows. It's not just about a lack of incentive to exercise and reduce consumption. Yeah it's popular and easy to bash fat people without having a serious understanding of the issues.
Actually if I ate 3 Big Macs a day and only had water with it, I would lose about a half a pound a day as my resting metabolism doing nothing for my present 225 lb. body is around 3000 - 3100 calories and 3 Big Macs ring in at 540 X 3 = 1620 calories. It takes 3500 calories to burn a pound. So in 2 days I would burn 3000 calories more than I ate, resulting in a loss of almost 1 pound.
Let's not kid ourselves, heart problems, hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and other looming health issues affect non-obese Americans with bad habits too. News outlets are hyper focused on obesity, giving the impression non-obese folks are all healthy and all obese folks are unhealthy. This is not true.
Struck a nerve with you three, I see. Now get out there and expend that stored energy!
I have been heavy since 5 years old. I have dieted and lost and gained over and over and always feeling guilty for my weight. In my early 40's I discovered I could lift, seriously lift. I wanted to compete as a bodybuilder. What a way to turn around my physique! I adopted a bodybuilder lifestyle, lifted weights, did my cardio, swam. Worked with a trainer and swim coach. I lost 50 lbs. I still weighed 217 with a lean body mass of 140, but could not get any leaner. I dropped calories further and upped my training intensity and frequency. I hit menopause and weight started coming on. I tried harder. Finally, at age 56 I was doing my normal routine leg pressing 450 lbs for reps. I then swam laps. Next morning I awoke with my heart going 150 and my blood pressure over 200. Now I'm on meds, have gained weight and am sick. But I haven't given up. So I'm sick of hearing about how all the obese need to do is eat less and exercise more.
Uh, huh. Americans are being poisoned by factory farmed foods, pesticides, herbicides, plastics, and GMOs which are known to damage the endocrine system, slow down the thyroid, and contribute to ill health and obesity, but the government (who is complicit with Monsanto, Dow and other industrial juggernauts) just sees most Americans as more greedy and lazy?
I'm not buying it.
Stop messing with our food, water, and air and maybe Americans could return to better health! It's not really that difficult, but there is too much money to be made by pharmaceuticals who want to sell antibiotics to the meat industry, chemical companies that want you to spray everything crawling thing, and the plastic industry that is making billions on their packaging.
Amen.
your absolutely right!!!!! but expect some turd to say some sh.t about tin foil hats.
Odd that insurance companies have billions of dollars invested in the same 'fast food' industries that are slowly killing us.
I was 31 lbs. over the obese level when I was told by my doctor that since my blood sugar jumped over 2 physicals from 99 to 113 that if I didn't lose weight the number would go to 126 or more and I'd have diabetes. He scared the hell out of me. I lost 20 lbs. in 20 days by limiting my food intake to 2000 calories a day and doing 1000 calories of exercise a day. This takes about 3 hours of walking and bicycle riding. I'm now under the obese setting and my blood sugar from a check a week ago is down around 90. One bad part of exercising is as we age the joints hurt more with an old football injury making it somewhat painful to walk at times, not every day. Now I try to do 1000 calories of activity a day and try to limit food intake to stay at my present weight. Activity can be walking 3.4 miles for 400 calories, riding a bicycle for 6 miles for 345 calories and then finish up by vacuuming the house for 300 calories or driving my wife to the doctor (3 calories a minute) or standing around (3 calories a minute). This is all based on a 225 lb. body. If you weight 150 lbs. then you proportionally less say 80 calories for walking a mile, 38 calories for riding a bicycle a mile (of course you burn it faster as you ride a lot faster than you walk) and 2 calories a minute for standing or driving your car. A second bad part of exercising is that the cops in some town, my town especially associate bicycle riders with being parolees or criminals. The local town paper said the cops coined a phrase of SOBs standing for Scum on bicycles and put a headline in the paper saying "If you see bicycle riders in your area, call the cops." That's the truth. Retired Nuclear engineer and 14 gallon blood donor.
What does obesity have to do with rising housing costs? Can't MSN pay someone to write two articles instead of lumping two unrelated subjects into one?
The reason obesity causes depression [and BTW it can be a symptom of a lot of illnesses, but it's not necessarily a cause as Big Diet and Big Pharma would have us all believing] is because of the culture of fat hatred that's allowed to exist in this country. Fat people are vilified for their laziness and their cost to society because the sheep need someone to blame for their own problems. Throughout history we see segments of populations being set up as scapegoats for all of society's ills and it tends to lead to genocide. Let's remember all the 'money' obesity supposedly costs goes somewhere - it's keeping someone rich - namely the media, the pharmacuetical industry, the diet industry and the weight loss surgeons.
Deport the illegals and housing costs will go down. Now you know why the Real Estate industry was applauding illegal immigration since the 1970s.
In addition, there are few minerals in our soil and little nutrition
in our food supply and spiked with High Fructose, Corn Syrup, modified corn
starch, Aspartame and other contaminants.
People are eating more because the body is starving, hungry for nutrition after a full meal. This better explains obesity and diabetes in such great numbers as well; hence this was not a problem 20 to 30 years ago.
What's the solution – break the union between government law makers and big business by awareness then replacing the congress and senate and ridding business & banking executives out of other government posts that regulate for their own benefit.
This will only occur when massive amount of citizens realize they been lied too and ripped off for generations, then get angry and say enough is enough.
America is getting fat period.
Eating unhealthy food + lack of exercise = bad health and an early death
Not really hard to figure out that one....
So according to this article only fat old people are paying higher housing costs? How ridiculous!
The point that housing's costing more (though it has little to do with the obesity epidemic!) is one of the things the ridiculous articles that claim renting is better than buying a home ignore. It costs me less than $200/month for homeowners insurance plus property taxes on my mortgage-free, $250K home. The costs of replacing roofs, furnaces, etc. and maintenance are less than another $200/month. And when the time comes, if it does, when I'll need to move to an assisted living apartment, I've got a huge asset to help with any extra costs I may have then: cabfare instead of driving, etc.
weird how people get antsy over obesity, when the cure can be done by themselves. I found a great article at healthywealthyaging(dot)net that talks about obesity, maybe that would help