Aging, Quality of Life, and Social Support

Definitions Of Aging

There are several aspects that define aging from its own perspective. Aging actually is not a unidimensional concept and people can age in different ways giving rise to different sets of definitions of aging. The two most commonly used definitions are chronological age and functional age. Chronological age is based on time and refers to numbers of years, month or days passed by an individual since birth when used to demarcate limits for functions like voting, issuing driving hence, or for retirement. The underlying assumptions are that the chronological age is a barometer of the ability to perform certain functions. Functional age is a measure of how well a person can function in the physical and social environment as compared to other people of same age. It has three components: biological, psychological, and social. It is apparent that even though chronological age not is an indicator of an individual’s level of functioning, yet it is linked with aspect of functional age in some way. Demographers and sociologists sometimes categorized the population in three groups (Carey, 2003) as follows: Aged 55-65 as young old (b) Aged 66-85 as old (c) Aged 85 years and above as oldest old. These categorizations have to be re-evaluated in different cultural contexts depending on the life expectancy for that specific cultural group.