Eileen Crimmins, University Professor and AARP Chair at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, joined USC President Beong-Soo Kim in the studio for the latest episode of the Trojan Talks podcast.
In the episode, Kim and Crimmins discussed how scientists measure aging and longevity and how longer lifespans haven’t necessarily come with longer healthspans, or portions of life spent in good health. Crimmins, a pioneer in the field of biodemography, shared her perspectives on measuring biological versus chronological age, understanding life-course influences on health, and what demographic trends suggest about the future of aging:
“There is a large and identifiable difference now between biological age and chronological age, which is measured simply as the number of months or years since you were born. And the biological age indicates that there are some people that are aging fast and some people that are aging slow. So when we look at 70-year-olds, we see some that look biologically like 80- or 90-year-olds, and we see some that look like 40- or 50-year-olds.”
“We have always taught in the school of gerontology that aging begins not at birth, but before birth in your grandmother’s ovaries. And so things that happen extremely early in life, and maybe even to the generation before, can actually have long-term effects for you.”
“There is a clear issue in the United States right now that we are way behind where we should be in life expectancy overall. We now rank somewhere in the 60s, depending on what dataset you use, in life expectancy. Sixties! That means that the countries ahead of us are not people we ever thought would be in the same ballpark we’re in. … This is really a disaster in the United States. We peaked in life expectancy in 2014. So, we’ve gone a decade with no improvement.”
