A new study sheds light on how the specter of dementia and chronic pain reduce people’s desire to live into older ages. Among Norwegians 60 years of age and older the desire to live into advanced ages was significantly reduced by hypothetical adverse life scenarios with the strongest effect caused by dementia and chronic pain, according to research conducted at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center based at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.
The paper is among the first to study Preferred Life Expectancy (PLE) based on hypothetical health and living conditions. The findings are published in the July issue of the journal Age and Ageing.
The research team was led by Vegard Skirbekk, PhD, professor of Population and Family Health, who used data from Norway, because of its relatively high life expectancy at birth. He investigated how six adverse health and living…
