Life expectancy in Belgium and all over the world is increasing. In Belgium, the life expectancy at birth is now 81.7 years according to the Federal Statistics Office Statbel. On 1 January 2022, there were 2561 centenarians in Belgium.
As people live longer, the concept of being old should change. While historically, elders have always embodied wisdom and knowledge, these are not the only representations of the elderly. Stereotypes that are well entrenched in our societies persist in our collective imagination.
Old people just stay at home, knitting and watching TV; they have white or grey hair and wear outdated clothes, they have bad memories and wrinkles… These perceptions do not surprise Stéphane Adam, Professor of Psychology of Old Age at the University of Liège.
If the image that young children have of our elders is generally negative, Adam says that this perception is also imprinted in the minds of the rest of the population.
"The image which we have of the elderly is quite ambivalent. Sometimes, we will consider an elderly person as having experience. But for the most part, we talk about dependence, loneliness, isolation, being bedridden. They are associated with illness, slowness, and so on."
The professor of psychology of old age reveals that over the decades this perception only gets worse. "We are more negative about ageing than we were decades ago. An elderly person is perceived as a burden and an economic weight. In an economic society, we do not stop communicating on this point and this generates a particularly negative vision."
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According to the World Health Organization, those aged 60 and over will increase from 1 billion people in 2020 to 1.4 billion in 2030. In a few years, one in six people globally will be 60 years or older.
In 2018, there were more than two million people aged 65 and over in Belgium, which corresponds to 19% of the population. According to the Federal Planning Bureau, this proportion will approach 26% in 2050.
