People are entering older age with more capacity (cognitive and physical)

Reading: Cohort trends in intrinsic capacity in England and China, Beard et al. Nature Aging5, 87–98 (2025).

Following up from yesterday’s post about the increasing healthspan-lifespan gap, here’s some good news:

[…] we found that more recent cohorts entered older ages with higher levels of capacity, while subsequent age-related declines were somewhat compressed compared to earlier cohorts. […] For example, a 68-year-old participant of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing born in 1950 had higher capacity than a 62-year-old born 10 years earlier.

ELSA is interesting in itself, collecting self-reports and objective measures of well-being and health for 50 year olds and above.

The authors of this particular paper created a metric for various aspects of life, for example “vitality capacity” which is based on grip strength, breathing, and other measures. They used a weighted model, using a technique that’s new to me, called confirmatory factor analysis.

They show that we have more “capacity” as we become older compared to previous generations:

Uploaded image — Figure 1 (full size) from the paper showing the factors and how they combine into capacities.

I did wonder how the healthspan-lifespan gap was growing if we’re healthier compare to previous generations. I don’t know. Perhaps being stronger when older means we live longer, but have a higher risk of acquiring a chronic condition.

ageing