Greying Population Stays in the Pink - IELTS Reading Answers With Explanations

Gearing up for the IELTS Reading test can feel overwhelming at times, mainly when you are about to crack passages like “Greying Population stays in the Pink.” This text has previously appeared in an IELTS test and challenges you with its blend of context, words, and tricky question types! 

If you are a person aiming for a band  8 or higher, this blog by our experts will help you understand the passage more deeply and approach each question type with a great strategy.

In this article, we break down the “Greying Population Stays in the Pink” IELTS Reading passage and let you read its answers with explanations given to enhance your accuracy!

Types of Questions in “Greying Population Stays in the Pink” IELTS Reading Passage 

The types of questions found in this “Greying Population stays in the Pink” passage are:

• IELTS Reading Summary Completion  
• IELTS Reading Matching Endings

IELTS Reading Passage - Greying Population Stays in the Pink

Complete the questions and read the answer key with explanations of “Greying Population Stays in the Pink.” Ideally, you should not spend more than 20 minutes on this passage.

Elderly people are growing healthier, happier and more independent, say American scientists. The results of a 14-year study to be announced later this month reveal that the diseases associated with old age are afflicting fewer and fewer people and when they do strike, it is much later in life.

In the last 14 years, the National Long-term Health Care Survey has gathered data on the health and lifestyles of more than 20,000 men and women over 65. Researchers, now analysing the results of data gathered in 1994, say arthritis, high blood pressure and circulation problems - the major medical complaints in this age group - are troubling a smaller proportion every year. And the data confirms that the rate at which these diseases are declining continues to accelerate. Other diseases of old age - dementia, stroke, arteriosclerosis and emphysema - are also troubling fewer and fewer people.

'It really raises the question of what should be considered normal ageing,' says Kenneth Manton, a demographer from Duke University in North Carolina. He says the problems doctors accepted as normal in a 65-year-old in 1982 are often not appearing until people are 70 or 75.

Clearly, certain diseases are beating a retreat in the face of medical advances. But there may be other contributing factors. Improvements in childhood nutrition in the first quarter of the twentieth century, for example, gave today's elderly people a better start in life than their predecessors.

On the downside, the data also reveals failures in public health that have caused surges in some illnesses. An increase in some cancers and bronchitis may reflect changing smoking habits and poorer air quality, say the researchers. 'These may be subtle influences,' says Manton, 'but our subjects have been exposed to worse and worse pollution for over 60 years. It's not surprising we see some effect.'

One interesting correlation Manton uncovered is that better-educated people are likely to live longer. For example, 65-year-old women with fewer than eight years of schooling are expected, on average, to live to 82. Those who continued their education live an extra seven years. Although some of this can be attributed to a higher income, Manton believes it is mainly because educated people seek more medical attention.

The survey also assessed how independent people over 65 were, and again found a striking trend. Almost 80% of those in the 1994 survey could complete everyday activities ranging from eating and dressing unaided to complex tasks such as cooking and managing their finances. That represents a significant drop in the number of disabled old people in the population. If the trends apparent in the United States 14 years ago had continued,

researchers calculate there would be an additional one million disabled elderly people in today's population. According to Manton, slowing the trend has saved the United States government's Medicare system more than $200 billion, suggesting that the greying of America's population may prove less of a financial burden than expected.

The increasing self-reliance of many elderly people is probably linked to a massive increase in the use of simple home medical aids. For instance, the use of raised toilet seats has more than doubled since the start of the study, and the use of bath seats has grown by more than 50%. These developments also bring some health benefits, according to a report from the MacArthur Foundation's research group on successful ageing. The group found that those elderly people who were able to retain a sense of independence were more likely to stay healthy in old age.

Maintaining a level of daily physical activity may help mental functioning, says Carl Cotman, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine. He found that rats that exercise on a treadmill have raised levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor coursing through their brains. Cotman believes this hormone, which keeps neurons functioning, may prevent the brains of active humans from deteriorating.

As part of the same study, Teresa Seeman, a social epidemiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, found a connection between self-esteem and stress in people over 70. In laboratory simulations of challenging activities such as driving, those who felt in control of their lives pumped out lower levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. Chronically high levels of these hormones have been linked to heart disease.

But independence can have drawbacks. Seeman found that elderly people who felt emotionally isolated maintained higher levels of stress hormones even when asleep. The research suggests that older people fare best when they feel independent but know they can get help when they need it.

'Like much research into ageing, these results support common sense,' says Seeman. They also show that we may be underestimating the impact of these simple factors. 'The sort of thing that your grandmother always told you turns out to be right on target,' she says.

Questions

Questions 1-9

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-Q, below.

Write the correct letter, A-Q, in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.

 IELTS Reading “Greying Population Stays in the Pink” Answers With Explanations

Tips to Tackle the Question Types in the Greying Population Stays in the Pink IELTS Reading Passage

Matching Sentence Endings

Matching sentence-ending questions come with two lists: a list of incomplete sentences and another one of possible sentence endings. You will have to match them on the basis of the information provided in the passage. 

• The answers will be in the same order as the list of incomplete sentences.
• Use the elimination process to get the correct answer.
• Don’t read the complete text until you have studied the incomplete sentences and the endings.
• Only read the relevant sentences.
• You will have to match meanings and not the exact words. Thus, look for paraphrasing and words.
• You must ensure that the grammatical structure of the two halves of the sentence matches correctly.

Summary Completion

Summary Completion is a type of IELTS reading question that requires you to fill in a gap in a paragraph with a word or phrase from the passage. To answer summary completion questions, you can use the following strategies:

• Reading the sentences carefully will give you an idea of the type of word or phrase that is missing.
• Scanning the passage for the keywords in the given question sentence can help you to identify the correct word or phrase. 
• Reading the sentence with the missing word or phrase will help you to see how the word or phrase fits into the sentence.
• Check your answer once you have filled in the gap and make sure that your answer makes sense in the context of the sentence.

To conclude, IELTS Reading can be challenging. However, with proper preparation, common errors can be avoided. Additionally, expanding IELTS vocabulary, practising different question types like the ones in 'Greying Population stays in the Pink' IELTS Reading Answers, and managing time efficiently are crucial steps toward improvement.

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