Journal of

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 Background and Aim: Aging is a natural experience which is usually accompanied by a variety of diseases. Hence, this research was conducted to study the elderly people’s disease rate and the number of times they refer to medical centers in Tehran.

 Materials and Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted on the old people referring to the Elderly Centers in Tehran in 2012. For data collection purposes, valid and reliable self-report demographic and disease questionnaires were used. The data were analyzed by SPSS software together with T-test and one-way ANOVA.

 Results: Four hundred old people participated in this study. Of the participants, 300 (75%) were female and 100 (25%) male with a mean age of 67.65 (±6.38) years. Besides, 160 (40%) people had heart diseases, 137 (34.3%) muscoskeletal diseases, and 83 (20.8%) endocrine diseases. Moreover, 381 (95.2%) participants had referred to doctors and therapeutic centers at least once during the last year. Furthermore, 177 subjects (44.2%) were hospitalized at least once last year.

 Conclusion: The prevalence of diseases in elderly people is more than expected. Most old people refer to doctors and therapeutic centers, which is indicative of the fact that they suffer from diseases and need varied health services.

 

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Background and Aim: The recently emerged symptoms of population aging have raised serious concerns in some developed countries. A recent report by the United Nations (UN) indicates that aging is more rapidly growing and is even more serious in developing countries than it is in certain other countries. Therefore, this study is aimed to determine the impression of aging on non-oil economic growth. Materials and Methods: A simple economic growth model was built which would take demographic variables into account. Then, using the country's data for the years 1967-2011, the researchers tried to estimate autoregressive distributed lags (ADL). The short- and long-term models, and error correction model were estimated using Microfit 4.0 software. Results: The findings show that physical capital, human capital and trade openness have a significant positive effect on per capita income, both in the long and in the short run. Similarly, the regression analysis indicates that “Ageing Index” may have a significant effect on economic growth in Iran’s non-oil sector. Conclusion: Due to the young makeup of Iran's population, the signs of aging economy have not raised sensitiveness but predictions indicate that the aging process in Iran will be intensified in the coming decades and its negative effects will emerge in near future. Therefore, due to the long-term effects of aging on economic growth, working structure and retiredness reform policies, it is vital to stabilize population growth at an optimal rate, and more importantly, pay attention to capital storage.

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