The Impact of Aging Policy on Societal Age Stereotypes and Ageism

Abstract

Background and Objectives While studies have researched ageism in public policy, few investigated the impact of aging policy on ageism—typically, an unintended consequence. Ageism is linked to $63 billion in healthcare cost, so its antecedents are of interest. We test the association between Aging-Policy-Agenda-Setting and Societal-Age-Stereotypes; and hypothesize a mediating pathway via Medicalization-of-Aging, moderated by demographics. Research Design and Methods Scholars identified Singapore’s Pioneer-Generation-Policy (PGP) as one of the largest policy implementations in recent years, where the agenda was set by the Prime Minister at an equivalent State-of-the-Union address in 2013, and US$7 billion allocated to fund outpatient healthcare costs for aged 65 years/older. Over 400,000 older adults received a PGP card and home visits by trained volunteers who co-devised a personalized utilization plan. We leveraged a 10-billion-word dataset with over 30 million newspaper and magazine articles to dynamically track Societal-Age-Stereotype scores over 8 years from pre-to-post policy implementation. Results Societal-Age-Stereotypes followed a quadratic trend: Prior to the Aging-Policy-Agenda-Setting from 2010-2014, stereotypes were trending positive; after 2014, it trended downwards to become more negative. Medicalization-of-Aging mediated the relationship between Aging-Policy-Agenda-Setting and Societal-Age-Stereotypes. Further, Old-age-Support-Ratio moderated the mediational model, suggesting that the impact of Policy on Medicalization is stronger when a society is more aged. Discussion and Implications We provided a framework for policy makers to ameliorate the unintended consequences of aging policies on societal ageism—if unaddressed, it will exert an insidious toll on older adults, even if initial policies are well-intentioned.

Ageism on Twitter during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…In preparing for a post‐pandemic future, governments worldwide must place older persons at the center of policy responses (World Economic Forum, 2020 ). Policymakers should be mindful not to cast older adults as objects to be pitied (Ng, Chow et al., 2022 ). Evoking the sympathy of the public is not the same as evoking their “systems thinking,” a mindset which considers how various mechanisms interact to impact the lives of older adults (Sweetland et al., 2017 ).…”

Hostility Toward Baby Boomers on TikTok

“…Additionally, policymakers should consider that negative evaluations of older people may be influenced by a history of negative contact ( Ng et al, 2021c ). Existing efforts to reframe aging ( Ng & Indran, 2021c , 2022a , 2022b ; Sweetland et al, 2017 ) and to promote positive intergenerational contact should ensure that younger people are exposed to counter-stereotypical exemplars, such as older adults who are warm and amicable.…”

Anti-Asian Sentiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 20 Countries: Analysis of a 12-Billion-Word News Media Database

“…The diversity of social media usage across multiple platforms renders data collation challenging, and most social media platforms such as Facebook are closed for public access—they have also become increasingly monetized, selling selected data sets that may not be representative. Though our methodology allows for dynamic social sensing, compared to traditional methods [ 44 - 54 ], this is a significant drawback that we intend to overcome in future studies upon augmenting our database.…”