ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605280030
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
BY 2020, the number of people over 65 in Virginia is expected to increase 85.3 percent, and the number of people 85 and older will more than double.
David Newman volunteers four half-days a week at the Free Clinic of the Roanoke Valley, sorting medications and preparing stock for prescription-filling. Occasionally, he helps with food collections at Roanoke Area Ministries.
Newman is 87 - an age more often associated with leisure than work. But he works, by choice, for its physical and mental benefits.
"People tell me I don't look nor do I act like an 87-year-old," said Newman, a retired Roanoke pharmacist. "I personally see a change in my strength and endurance, but I expect that. I sort of regulate my work to allow me rest and relaxation."
Newman represents what demographers and analysts like to herald as a group of people who have been handed the "gift of time" - a catch phrase that signifies a 26-to 27-year upward shift in the age of the nation's elderly population this century. He also represents what the U.S. Census Bureau calls the fastest growing segment - the "oldest old," or people 85 and over.
According to "64+ in the United States," a new Census Bureau report, that segment increased 274 percent between 1960 and 1994 and is expected to double in size - reaching 7 million - by 2020.
In Virginia the trend is no different, said Edward Ansello, director of the Virginia Center on Aging. The number of 85-and-older residents has climbed from 67,000 in 1993 to an estimated 73,000. By 2020, that figure is expected to reach 162,000, according to the Census Bureau report.
And in the eight-locality region served by Roanoke's League of Older Americans-Area Agency on Aging, the number since 1993 has risen from 5,526 to 5,875.
As the number of "oldest old" rises, so too will the number of multigenerational families, said Ansello, whose own family last week reached four generations with the birth of his first grandchild. That increase is likely to turn attention toward a host of aging issues, one of them "caregiving" - care of the elderly by family members, he said.
"Those of us in the top two tiers are going to be involved in a reciprocal relationship involving caregiving that we hadn't had in the past," he said. "What's going to happen is caregiving will become a lot more recognized as an issue."
A bill introduced in the House of Delegates during this year's General Assembly session would allow an up-to-$500 tax credit for taxpayers who provide chronic care to relatives who would otherwise require institutional care. Eligible taxpayers would be those with adjusted gross incomes of $5,000 to $50,000.
The bill was carried over to the 1997 session to allow study of the tax credit's fiscal impact, Ansello said.
"Family caregivers provide care to an extraordinarily large number of people in need of help because of physical impairments," said Ansello, whose agency endorsed the legislation. "A lot of studies have shown that for every person in a nursing home, three to four people with similar levels of impairment are living in the community through family caregiving."
The Census Bureau report, which included data from 1992-94, projected an 85.3 percent increase in Virginia's 65-and-over population by the year 2020. Nationwide, the numbers are expected to rise 62.7 percent - from 33 million to 53 million.
"These data are important because they confirm that states need to prepare their resources for an increasingly aged population," said Kevin Kinsella, Census Bureau analyst.
Kinsella said some states "age" because of "in-migration" of elderly, "out-migration" of the young or sustained low fertility.
Of the latter, Kinsella said "if some areas have very low fertility rates over a long period of time, they're not pumping a lot of babies into the population. The percentage of elderly tends to rise."
The report showed that the largest number of America's elderly live in the most populous states. In 1993, nine states nationwide had more than 1 million elderly residents - California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey.
The report projected that by 2020, 19 states will have more than 1 million. Virginia will be among them, with a projected 65-and-over population of 1.3 million.
"In a bigger sense, it means states are going to have to look to long-term care needs," Ansello said. "The current systems of relying upon Medicaid and Medicare are not going to be sufficient long term.
"It's like one big ball of wax. And so many elements will get stuck to that big ball of wax as it rolls into the 21st century."
Other highlights of the Census Bureau report:
In general, the elderly have more assets than the non-elderly.
Thirty-five percent of the elderly were poor in 1959. But by 1992, the proportion had dropped to 13 percent. (Virginia's is slightly higher than the national percentage.)
Poverty rates in 1992 still were relatively high for elderly African-Americans (33 percent) and elderly Hispanic-Americans (22 percent).
Women make up a growing share of the older labor force (55 and over), rising from 23 percent in 1950 to 44 percent in 1993.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. David Newman, 87, has beenby CNBvolunteering for the Free Clinic in the pharmaceutical stock room
for 17 years.