Older Adults & Aging

An aging population is a looming economic and social burden, particularly in Europe and Northeast Asia, and to a lesser extent in the United States.

Overview At a time when the global population of people ages 65 and older is expected to triple to 1.5 billion by mid-century, public opinion on whether the growing number of older people is a problem varies dramatically around the world, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Concern peaks in East Asia, where nearly […]

In recent years, legislatures and courts, religious leaders and scientists, citizens and patient advocates have all weighed in on end-of-life issues ranging from whether the terminally ill should have the right to take their own lives to how much treatment and sustenance those in the last stages of life should receive.

Religious leaders, scholars and ethicists from 16 major American religious groups explain how their faith traditions’ teachings address physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and other end-of-life questions.

In 2011, 7.7 million children in the U.S.–one-in-ten—were living with a grandparent, and approximately 3 million of these children were also being cared for primarily by that grandparent.1 Both of these numbers rose rapidly after the onset of the recession in 2007 and have stabilized since 2009, when the recession officially ended, according to a […]

This posting links to a September 2013 Pew Research Center report on children living with, and being cared for, by their grandparents.

If new medical treatments could slow the aging process and allow people to live decades longer, would you want to? Most Americans say no, but roughly two-thirds think that most other people would say yes.

No religious group in the United States has released an official statement on radical life extension. However, here are brief summaries of how some clergy, bioethicists and other scholars from 18 major American religious groups say their traditions might approach this evolving issue.