RoundTable.

• 2010
• Oct
• 22

New Crop of Elderly Outsmart Their Predecessors

George contributes this notable story written over at Scientific American. The article reads:

If 50 is the new 40 and 60 is the new 50, what’s the new 70? Well, it seems safe to at least say that 70 isn’t what it used to be. And that’s good. Because a new study finds that 70-year-olds did better on intelligence tests than 70 year olds used to do. In Sweden, anyway. The research was published in the journal Neurology . [Simona Sacuiu et al, Secular changes in cognitive predictors of dementia and mortality in 70-year-olds ]

The study compared a group of people born in 1901 and 1902 and tested in 1971 with another group born in 1930 and tested in 2000. And the newer crop of 70 years old performed far better than the previous generation did.

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