Fried L P, Freedman M, Endres T E, Wasik B
Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., USA.
West J Med. 1997 Oct;167(4):216-9.
Despite the fact that, in a few years, a fifth of the US population will be older than 65 years and people will be living a third of their lives after retirement, we have developed few avenues that would permit older adults to play meaningful roles as they age and few institutions to harness the experience that older adults could contribute to society. In fact, older adults constitute this country's only increasing natural resource--and the least used one. In this article we consider the rationale for developing institutions that harness the abilities and time of older adults, rather than focusing solely on their needs. Such an approach would decrease the structural lag between a social concept of retirement as unproductive leisure and an aging population that is larger, healthier, and with a need for more productive opportunities. Gerontologically designed opportunities for contribution on a large social scale could well provide a national approach to primary prevention to maintain health and function in older adults.
尽管再过几年，美国五分之一的人口将超过65岁，人们退休后的生活将占其一生的三分之一，但我们几乎没有开辟出什么途径，能让老年人在变老的过程中发挥有意义的作用，也几乎没有建立起什么机构来利用老年人能够为社会做出贡献的经验。事实上，老年人是这个国家唯一不断增长的自然资源——也是利用最少的资源。在本文中，我们探讨了建立机构以利用老年人的能力和时间的基本原理，而不是仅仅关注他们的需求。这种方法将减少社会对退休的观念（即无生产性的休闲）与日益庞大、健康且需要更多生产性机会的老年人口之间的结构性滞后。从老年学角度设计的大规模贡献机会很可能为国家提供一种初级预防方法，以维持老年人的健康和功能。
