Image by Image via Pixabay / Victor Tangermann
They may be the harbingers of doom for countless industries, but it seems that the millennium generation is also not doing very well.
At least, this is according to a team of sociologists at Ohio State University who discovered a disturbing trend: generations X and Y – this second group commonly known as millennials – are aging very badly. According to his research, which was published Thursday in the American Journal of Epidemiology, a downward trend in physiological, psychological and behavioral health patterns started in the baby boomers and continued during Generation X and especially the Millennium Generation.
“The deterioration in health profiles that we find in generations X and Y is alarming,” said Ohio State chief researcher and professor of sociology, Hui Zheng, in a press release.
“If we don’t find a way to slow this trend, we will potentially see an increase in morbidity and mortality rates in the United States as these generations age,” he added.
Specifically, Zheng and graduate student Paola Echave analyzed data from two gigantic surveys involving nearly 700,000 people that were conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics to see how people’s health was changing over time and across generations.
It is not just the increase in obesity rates that explains the deterioration in health, although the study notes that this appears to contribute to some of the factors that were used to determine overall health. Other factors such as depression, increasingly sedentary lifestyles and the increase in the use of drugs and alcohol also contributed.
“One possibility is that people in older generations are quitting smoking in greater numbers, while younger generations are more likely to start smoking,” Zheng said in the statement. “But we need more research to see if this is correct.”
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