By Paul Irving Ageism is alive and well, with old-age stereotypes lurking in public and private institutions. From the water cooler to the webpage, negative age bias is frustratingly prevalent. For older individuals, recognizing the current reality is a difficult, yet necessary, first step toward self-empowerment. Those who take that step position themselves to make their later years as productive and purposeful as they can be.

Evidence of Ageism Abounds In a recent New York Times editorial, Anne Karpf said, “Older people are likely to be seen as a burden and a drain on resources, rather than as a resource in themselves.... Such ‘gerontophobia’ is harmful because we internalize it. Ageism has been described as prejudice against one’s future self. It tells us that age is our defining characteristic and that, as midnight strikes on a milestone birthday, we will become nothing but old—emptied of our passions, abilities and experience—infused instead with frailty and decline” (Karpf, 2015). A Yale study of Facebook underscored the problem. The authors analyzed each publicly accessible Facebook group that concentrated on older adults (Levy et al., 2014). Of the eighty-four groups analyzed, all but one of the site descriptions focused on negative age stereotypes.

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Seventy-four percent excoriated older individuals, 27 percent infantilized them, and 37 percent advocated banning them from public activities, such as shopping. As the authors suggested, “Facebook has the potential to break down barriers between generations; in practice, it may have erected new ones.” In “An Inconvenienced Youth? Ageism and Its Potential Intergenerational Roots,” Michael North and Susan Fiske (2012) wrote, “In the modern world, older people face reduced social and economic opportunities, damage to self-esteem, and exacerbated physical health problems, to name only a few consequences of ageist treatment.” Ageism is not just based on poor information. It’s morally wrong. The Best Of Yarbrough And Peoples Rar Download.

It impedes opportunity for older workers and for those who seek work. It exacerbates financial insecurity for a population that wishes and needs to remain engaged. It elevates costly health risks for older adults and the broader society.

Ageism’s practical consequences are real, experienced all too often by those who can least afford to be sidelined. Ageism in the Workplace The effects of ageism are particularly concerning at a time in which baby boomers have new expectations about work and retirement. Two-thirds of baby boomers plan to work past age 65, or do not plan to retire at all, according to Catherine Collinson (2014) of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. How will they realize their aspirations? Paradoxically, ageism may frustrate the opportunity to fully realize the benefits of this emerging resource of human capital. A research report from AARP (2013) found that approximately two-thirds of workers ages 45 to 74 say they have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace. Of those, a remarkable 92 percent say age discrimination is very, or somewhat, common.