Ageism and older people's health and well-being during the Covid-19-pandemic: the moderating role of subjective aging

Abstract

In the Covid-19 pandemic, being older means being in a special focus: Probabilities for severe infections and mortality rise with increasing age and protective measures for this population group have been increased. This was accompanied by public discourse that portrayed older adults stereotypically as vulnerable and frail but also highlighted the hardships younger people have to endure to protect them. Given the possibly detrimental effects of ageism on individuals and societies, we were interested in older adults' perception of ageism in the Corona-crisis and its relation to their health and well-being. Furthermore, we were interested in subjective aging variables as moderators in the ageism-health relationship. In June 2020, N = 611 independently living people aged 60 + from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg were recruited via a survey research institute and interviewed online or by phone. They reported on perceived ageism in different contexts, their life satisfaction, subjective health, subjective age and self-perceptions of aging. Depending on context, ageism was perceived by around 20% of participants, and overall negatively related to subjective health and life satisfaction after the onset of the pandemic. Moderated hierarchical regressions showed that a younger subjective age buffered the negative effect of ageism on subjective health, while perceiving aging as social loss increased its effect on life satisfaction. We discuss the importance of addressing and reducing ageism (not only) in times of crisis and the consequences for individuals and societies.

Keywords: Ageism; Covid-19; Life satisfaction; Subjective aging; Subjective health; Well-being.

Fig. 1

Schematic depiction of investigated relationships between perceived ageism and health and well-being outcomes, moderated by subjective aging variables

Fig. 2

Effect of perceived ageism on life satisfaction after the onset of the pandemic for different values of self-perceptions of aging as social loss (low = 16th percentile, medium = 50th percentile, high 84th percentile)

Fig. 3

Effect of perceived ageism on subjective health for different values of subjective age (low = 16th percentile, medium = 50th percentile, high 84th percentile)