This is part of an ongoing series of interviews by CREA with workers in the field of aging.

Dr. Ricardo Moragas Moragas

Gerontologist, University of Barcelona

Nowhere is the global trend of aging more prominent than in the Mediterranean nations of Europe. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2025, those over 60 will outnumber those under 30 in both Spain and Italy. Ricardo Moragas Moragas, a Spanish social gerontologist, has spent the last two decades studying the phenomenon of aging in Mediterranean societies.

Moragas is manager of the Research Group on Ageing at the Parc Cientific de Barcelona, associated with the University of Barcelona. Under Moragas' direction, the University has begun offering a Master's program in gerontology, one of the first in Europe. "Originally we offered an undergraduate program as well, but we found that this field is most effectively taught as a second-tier discipline," he says. "There's so much generalized knowledge to cover in an undergraduate education." He recommends that undergraduates interested in gerontology specialize in their passion and relate it to gerontology later, as part of graduate work.

This advice seems to mirror Moragas' own entry into the field. After receiving his undergraduate degree in Business at Berkeley in the 1960s, Moragas worked in Human Resources departments in both industry and academia. A large factor in his entry into the field of gerontology was his observation of employee treatment. "What got me interested was working in business," he says. "With their experience, elderly workers are great resources to their employers. But the company I worked for put a hiring block on the elderly, which was a mistake."

Moragas's academic career has centered on the changing response to aging in Mediterranean societies. Traditionally, he says, public social services for the elderly have been less developed here than in Northern Europe because attitudes toward aging have been very different. "There has always been a distinct way of Mediterranean aging. A big difference from Northern Europe and America has been extended family support: it is accepted and expected that the elderly will move in with younger relatives or be supported by them, rather than going to a nursing home. [People] can't sleep at ease without helping their ancestors."

This ideal of Mediterranean aging has recently become threatened by two factors: an influx of elderly from Northern and Eastern Europe and a rise in consumerism. Moragas compares the former trend to that of aged Americans relocating to the mild climates of Florida and Arizona -- and in Mediterranean countries, as in Arizona, public health administrators are faced with the challenge of housing these migrants. "The public health system in Europe is such that your health care can be transferred across borders, so finding the money for supporting them isn't so much of a problem," says Moragas. "But we're still faced with the trend of an elderly population disconnected from their families, and that's a long-term problem for us."

The best solution, Moragas believes, is the continued involvement of family in caring for the aged -- but a prerequisite to this involvement is the continued acceptance of aging as a natural process, rather than as a hindrance to be overcome through consumerism. In particular, Moragas calls anti-aging medications a contradiction in terms. "All this money that people are spending on cremes to remove wrinkles and look like they're 20, these are worse than futile, because they drain funding from real care. Aging is a part of being human -- we're never going to overcome that, and we shouldn't try. Medical care is good, but to really help the elderly to live the way they want we need to discourage these negative attitudes towards being elderly." Instead, he encourages efforts to promote retirement as a "second life", marked by volunteerism and other activity.

Moragas recently returned from a gerontology conference in Brazil, and hopes to organize another this year. Many Latin American nations, he says, tradionally take the Mediterranean view of aging, but they will soon undergo a shift in perspective: "In places like Brazil, as cohorts of people are freed from infectious disease, they're going to demand services."

Although Moragas sees the traditional Mediterranean attitude on aging as having great benefits in both Europe and Latin America, he acknowledges that the attitude alone may be inadequate to provide sufficient care in the face of changing societies. To this end, a major focus of this year's conference in Brazil will be on possible roles of assistive technology in independent living.