Older Population as a Vulnerable Group Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Older Population as a Vulnerable Group - Essay Example The research paper â€Å"Older Population as a Vulnerable Group† investigates the difficulties faced by older adults, who belong to the vulnerable group mainly because of their limited physical mobility, cognitive impairment, and weakened social networks. The explosive technological developments in the field of medicine over the last few decades have significantly improved health status of people, particularly in economically developed countries like the U.S and the UK. Those developments and innovations were capable of increasing the life expectancy of people, and this situation in turn resulted in a phenomenon called population ageing. The older population is a vulnerable group, and this group’s vulnerability is a combination of three factors like health status, cognitive ability, and social support. Older people are likely to be affected by issues like loneliness, stress, and depression. Therefore, they are increasingly exposed to deception and fraud. Population agei ng is a process where a country’s median age rises due to increasing life expectancy and/or decreasing birth rates. In economically developed countries like the UK and the U.S, rising life expectancy is the major cause leading to population ageing. Recently, even less economically developed countries have also improved their life expectancy and significantly contribute population ageing. Growing life expectancy is the prime cause of population ageing in the world except in 18 countries which are ‘demographic outliers’ according to the United Nations.... The Department of Health indicates that an individual over 85 is approximately three times more expensive to health care as compared to a person between the ages of 65 and 75 ("More than 10 million people..†). Although the UK government has framed extensive mechanisms to ensure rapid and quality care for the older population, the needs of a notable percent of aging people still go unnoticed. Causes of vulnerability The fast growth of the older population raises great challenges to the wellbeing of the old age people because they are exposed to various vulnerabilities. It is identified that older population is increasingly prone to vulnerabilities like exploitation, abuse, and negligence by others. Referring to the words of Kim and Geistfeld, older population constitutes a vulnerable group and they are â€Å"more susceptible to unscrupulous business practices than younger groups† ("What makes older adults vulnerable...). The authors continue that the older population ofte n becomes the target group for fraud because one can easily convince them. Scholars indicate that older individuals’ loneliness increases their vulnerability to fraudulent business transactions to a considerable extent. Psychological practitioners suggest that old age people are greatly in need of social interactions, and this is the reason why older consumers could be easily convinced by telemarketers. Majority of the older people have little market knowledge, and this weakness increases their susceptibility to fraud. It is awful to see that many of the old age people are not aware of the risk of losing ownership once payments are not made in time. Furthermore, they do not know whom they should contact in case