By SAMUEL KILSZTAJN*
Reducing the workload of the elderly will relieve pressure on the health system and, most importantly, improve the quality of life of the elderly
In the first corner of Ruslan and Ludmila, Pushkin tells the story of a shepherd who confesses his love to Naina, who replies “Пастух, я не люблю тебя!” (Shepherd, I do not love you!). The rejected shepherd went off, conquered the world, and once again confessed his love to Naina, who said to him “Hero, I do not love you!” Our tireless hero then set out on a new journey and, having learned the art of magic, summoned his beloved. A white-haired, hunchbacked, trembling old woman immediately appeared to him. “Naina, could it be you, where is all your beauty?” Forty years had passed, and Naina, twisting her hideous mouth into a smile, coughing and in a voice from beyond the grave, murmured her love for the seducer, who, ungrateful, ran away. In her classic old age, Simone de Beauvoir states that old age is more feared than death itself.
I am planning to leave in 2035, at the age of 84 (I don't believe in horoscopes, but 84 is the least common multiple between the 7-year cycles of the zodiac and the 12-year cycles of the Chinese horoscope). When, at the age of 70, I told this to my childhood friend, Peninha from the School of Medicine at USP, whose father passed away when he was almost 100 years old, she scolded me; but one of my teenage sons, open-mouthed, said, "all that, dad!?"
I have also made my living will, because my friend Einstein and I find it in bad taste to prolong our lives artificially. I only made the living will to protect my children from being accused by doctors of wanting to hasten my death, to get their hands on the inheritance (and not have anything left over to pay for the costs of hospital equipment).
Among ancient nomadic peoples, where reproduction depended on more hands and fewer mouths, the elderly were summarily sacrificed or abandoned to their fate. In Greek mythology, Cronus dethrones Uranus and is dethroned by Zeus. In civilized societies, although still with the shadow of archetypal sacrifices, the elderly began to have a prominent place, for humanitarian reasons and out of respect for the experience accumulated over the years.
Chronological age is a relatively modern concept and no one ages overnight.. You can tell a sexagenarian from a young person, but not necessarily from a person in their 50s or 70s. When I was 65, I met a childhood friend and asked her what she was doing. She said she was working with the elderly. I replied, “We are the elderly,” to which she replied, “then it’s with the fourth.”
In any case, human beings, at any point in their life, cannot be whole without facing old age head on and without hesitation. Living is an art, and knowing how to grow old is also an art. Living a life well lived means living each phase of life to the fullest. Only those who have wasted their lives feel anxious and struggle in vain to live forever young.
Old age has already found a worthy space in literature, with the elderly no longer being portrayed necessarily as wise, but as human beings. Matheus Lopes Quirino, in Portraits of old age in literature, cites the novels of Juliana Leite, Lídia Jorge, Martha Batalha, Oscar Nakasato, Rosângela Vieira Rocha and Salomé Esper.
Simone de Beauvoir tells us that in 30th century France, most adults died between the ages of 40 and 48 (the wealthy between 56 and XNUMX). The rapid growth of the world population is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. At the same time, the population is aging. From the second half of the XNUMXth century onwards, the aging of the population became so pronounced that the age pyramid took on the shape of a balloon. The World Health Organization, in view of the accelerated aging of the population, adopted the framework of active aging with the aim of improving the quality of life of people as they age and created the program of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities
In 1970, only 5% of the Brazilian population was 60 years of age or older (5 million); this percentage reached 16% in 2023 (32 million). It is also important to consider that the age range above 60 years is very broad, encompassing several age subgroups. We are witnessing an accelerated aging of the Brazilian population, resulting from the increase in longevity and the decline in the fertility rate. Life expectancy at birth, which was 52 years in 1970, rose to 76 years in 2023 (80 for women and 73 for men). At the same time, the fertility rate, which was 5,8 children per woman in 1970, fell to 1,6 in 2023, even below the population replacement level of 2,1.
In traditional pre-capitalist societies, families were extended, with several generations, including the elderly and extended families, living in the same home. However, with the industrialization and urbanization of societies, families became nuclear. The aging of the population increasingly requires intensive care for the growing number of elderly people who are losing their autonomy. The employment of caregivers professionals in developed countries is already quite significant, but in Brazil care is still essentially restricted to women in the family and domestic workers.
The world of work
In a world where people interact through the mediation of goods and employment by capital, workers have won the right to union organization, employment contracts, regulation and reduction of working hours, vacations, medical care, unemployment benefits and retirement. However, since the last decades of the 20th century, we have witnessed the precariousness and growth of the informal labor market, the outsourcing of work and the employment of “self-employed workers”, self-employed workers and entrepreneurs, in order to “circumvent”, that is, circumvent, labor rights.
I am enthusiastically following the current campaign to end the 6x1 work week and the way the VAT movement is being organized by young workers. The name Life Beyond Work is already a manifesto in itself. Some workers already work 5x2 hours, so we can now consider reducing the 44-hour work week and, why not? a 4x3 work week. From an economic standpoint, this would result in a drop in the unemployment rate, i.e., better distribution of jobs. If we think about productivity and wages, the misery that workers are subjected to has been constant, come rain or shine.
People are what they do, and when they stop doing what they do, they stop being. This is true for most people, especially for the unemployed or retired elderly, especially for men, because women generally have a wider range of interests and occupations with household chores, children, grandchildren and elderly people who have lost their autonomy.
The media has been reporting job losses for people over 50, even for non-retired people, even during the employment boom in Brazil in 2024. When people retire and stop working, they have a hard time reinventing themselves, they become more sedentary, lonely and prone to developing mental and physical health problems (and age doesn't help much either). Men, in particular, stay at home, getting in the way, disrupting work, grumpy, irritated by their grandchildren jumping on the couch, etc.
Idle, elderly people experience the contradiction of wanting to kill time and prolong their lives at the same time. There are elderly people who use visits to doctors and the health system as a form of socialization and taking medication as a form of self-esteem.
The issue of the aging of the Brazilian population, albeit timidly, has gained visibility in academic circles, research institutes and through initiatives by professionals in the field of gerontology, such as the channel @oquerolanageronto, who in March 2024 interviewed Alexandre Silva, National Secretary for the Human Rights of the Elderly.
The elderly are naturally, and by far, preferred users of the health system, consultations, exams and hospital admissions. In the current production structure, the work rhythm is rigid, it is all or nothing, either you work from sunrise to sunset, or you have no place in the job market. Elderly people would like to remain active but, because they are physically and mentally weakened by age, they would need to reduce their workload, not only the hours, but also the work rhythm.
Volunteering, although a worthwhile option, does not solve the problem, because the issue is preserving the self-esteem of the elderly, who need to feel useful and, in our society, the usefulness of work is dictated by remuneration. Times will come when everyone will be an amateur, everyone will work for love.
A Dom Cabral Foundation has dedicated itself to studying the impact of increased longevity and the necessary adaptation of workloads to include the elderly in the market. A few companies have opened temporary programs to hire elderly people. However, an institutional initiative and public policies would be necessary to guarantee jobs with hours and work rhythm adapted to the growing number of elderly people in the country.
Oh, but this will cause a lot of problems for companies! Yes, it will. But, on the other hand, it will relieve the health system and, most importantly, improve the quality of life of elderly people, men and women, promote their sociability, reduce depression, somatized diseases and the consumption of medication.
*Samuel Kilsztajn is a full professor of political economy at PUC-SP. Organizer and author,
among other books, on Social Economy in Brazil. [https://amzn.to/45a7UiA]
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