The proof that older people are getting smarter
Fitter, faster, stronger – and smarter. I'm paraphrasing, but that's how researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently summed up the Baby Boom generation in a recent report on the consequences of global ageing.
The developed world may be running out of lithe young things to drive our economies forward as birth rates collapse, but the oldies that remain are brainier than any generation before and can pick up at least some of the slack, it said.
The IMF's findings rely on data from 41 advanced and emerging market economies and show that, on average, older people from around the age of 50 are smarter or more cognitively able today than ever before. Moreover, of all the indicators of healthy ageing (better retained agility, flexibility, strength, stamina etc), it is an improvement in our mental capacities that is most marked in the data, says the IMF.
'We aim to offer a new perspective on the old argument that ageing will lead inevitably to slumping economic growth and mounting fiscal pressures', say Bertrand Gruss and Diaa Noureldin, lead authors of the new report. 'When it comes to cognitive capacities, the 70s are indeed the new 50s: A person who was 70 in 2022 had the same cognitive health score as a 53 year old in 2000. Older workers' physical health – such as grip strength and lung capacity – has also improved.'
The IMF aren't the only people who have looked at this trend. A 2022 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US shows that when it comes to brain power, Baby Boomers (born between 1946 to 64) beat the Great Generation (1901-27) on all the researchers' key measures of cognition.
'We found better age-adjusted performance in the cognitive domains of processing speed, executive function, attention and verbal fluency in more recent generations compared to the Greatest Generation', said its authors.
So why is the world seemingly getting smarter? Professor Axel Börsch-Supan, director of the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, said improvements in education have been key.
'That [Boomers] are smarter is essentially a function of their much better education than earlier generations ', he says. 'If you look at the years of schooling, that immensely increased in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean countries, but also in the North and the East.'
Education and better nutrition in childhood does not just help preserve good cognition in later years but improves employment prospects. And the longer you stay in employment, with all the mental and social stimulations that brings, the better things are for our brain health. Given the proportion of over 65s participating in the UK labour market has been slowly rising, and has more than doubled since 2000 participation was at 7.8 per cent over the first three months of that year, increasing to 15.7 per cent in 2025), no wonder our mental fire power is improving.
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