by Kim Parker, Pew Research Center
August 7, 2009
If a latter-day Ponce de Leon were to search for a modern fountain of youth, he'd do well to explore America's West.1 There he'd find the highest concentration of older adults in the United States who don't think of themselves as old. Fully 78% of adults ages 65 and older who live in the West say they don't feel old, compared with 67% of older adults who live in the rest of the country, according to a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults.
Asked how old they feel, two-thirds of Westerners ages 65 and older say they feel younger than their chronological years, compared with 57% of older Americans in other regions. Among older Westerners, half say they feel 10 or more years younger than their actual age and one-in-five say they feel 20 or more years younger
Rest of story:
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/738/go-west-older-adults-feel-young-at-heart