Unit 1 WebQuest - Internet Project

You’re Only as Old as You Feel!

Introduction | Task | Process | Guidance | Conclusion | Questions

Introduction
Do you think you may live to be 100 years old? In the United States the number of older people is increasing. In 1970, 9.8% of the people in the United States were 65 years of age or older, while by 2000, the percent for that age category had increased to 12.4%. In California in 2000, people 65 years and older represented 10.7% of the total population. The circle graph below shows the percent of the population of California for various age categories in 2000.

     In this project, you will explore how equations, functions, and graphs can help represent aging and population growth.

The Task
In your new job as an advisor to the governor of your state, you have been asked to prepare a portfolio or Web page to inform the residents of your state about the changing age structure of people in the United States. Your portfolio or Web page needs to contain the following information:

• a prediction for the age structure of the U.S. for the year 2050;
• a prediction of how life in the U.S. will change due to the aging of Americans;
• support for the predictions using mathematics, graphs, tables, and/or facts that you find so that the residents of your state will have confidence in your predictions.

• Find data about the age structure of the United States for the 20th century. For example, how many people were 65 or over in 1900? How many people were under 5 in 1960? How many people were 25-34 in 1980? For help, try these Web sites.
  www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0110384.html
  www.census.gov
  www.statistics.com
  www.prb.org
  www.elderweb.com
  www.agingstats.gov
• Devise a method you can use to predict the age structure of the population in the future.
• Use the data on age and population to prepare some type of graph(s) or table(s) to visually display your findings.
• Find another set of data, of your choice, that relates to aging. Display the data in a graph or table and include a brief description of the data.
• Explain your findings and describe the changes that you predict in the U.S. due to an aging population.
• Be creative. Add some additional data, information, or even pictures to your portfolio or Web page. For other data and information, try these Web sites.
  www.usatoday.com
  www.ssa.gov
  www.yahoo.com
  www.time.com/time/
  www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp

1. How has the average life expectancy for people in the United States changed during the 20th century?
2. How did the leading causes of death change during the 20th century? (Consider both diseases and accidents.) Why have these changed?
3. How does Social Security help retired people to meet their financial needs? In what other ways do retired people find the money to cover expenses?
4. How might products, services, and advertising change as the age of the population changes?
5. Will the elderly work longer? Will they be able to compete in the job market with younger people?
6. In the year 2050, you may be nearing retirement age. How will your lifestyle differ from the lifestyle of your parents or grandparents when they retired?
7. Consider finding data about the age distribution of the population in another country or worldwide. Compare this data to U.S. data.

• Present your project to your class or at a family night.
• Present the information on a Web page. Have other students critique your project and help you to make improvements to your project.
• Write a one-page summary of your project, including what you have learned from researching this topic. How has it changed your ideas about the elderly?

Lesson 1–9
Use the data below about people 65 years and older in the United States.

1. Let the year be on the horizontal axis and let the population be on the vertical axis. Plot the ordered pairs to make a line graph of this situation.
2. Describe how you might use this graph to predict the number of people that will be 65 years or older in 2050.
3. Use your method to make a prediction for 2050. Explain whether you think your prediction will be accurate.

1. If a person was selected at random in the state of California in 2000, what is the probability that the person was 65 years or older? Express your answer as a percent rounded to the nearest tenth.
2. If a person was selected at random in the state of California in 2000, what is the probability that the person was 85 years or older? Express your answer as a percent rounded to the nearest tenth.
3. How many times more likely was it to select a person 65 years or older than a person 85 or older in a random selection in California in 2000?
4. If a person was selected in California in 2000 that was 65 years or older, what is the probability that the person was also 85 years or older? Express your answer as a percent rounded to the nearest tenth.

1. What was the percent increase in the number of people over 65 from 1900 to 1910?
2. In 1900, the percent of the population of the U.S. that was over 65 was 4.1%. In 1910, the percent of the population of the U.S. that was over 65 was 4.3%. Find the difference in percent from 1900 to 1910.
3. Why are the answers to Exercises 1 and 2 different?
4. Describe how you might use percent to help you predict the number of people who will be 65 and over in 2050. Use your method to make a prediction.

In this project, students will study the age distribution of the population of the United States. You may also want to have them compare the U.S. age distribution to another country or the world. Students could also investigate the population structure in just their own state. In addition, you may want them to investigate life expectancy for people born at various times during the past 100 years and compare male and female life expectancies. Students could also compare the life expectancies of people in the U.S. to the life expectancies of people in other countries.

The Guidance section of the WebQuest contains questions that would be good for a whole-class discussion and for providing interdisciplinary connections. If you prefer, have each student research one of the questions and add the information they find to the final presentation of their WebQuest.

Several Web sites are included in the project to help students in completing this WebQuest. Encourage students to find additional sites and to share those sites with other students.

Students will work on this project in Unit 1.

Lesson	1–9	2–6	2–7
Page	56	108	112

ANSWERS
Lesson 1–9

1. [Insert the graph Number of People Age 65 and Older]
2. Sample answer: Draw another line on the graph that comes close to most of the points on the original line graph. Extend the line through the year 2050. Find the population value at that point.
3. Sample answer: about 49,300,000; The line comes fairly close to many of the points, so the estimate is probably reasonable if the health of people stays about the same as in the past.

1. (3,949,000 – 3,080,000) χ 3,080,000 • 100 ≈ 28%
2. 4.3% – 4.1% = 0.2%
3. In Exercise 1, you are finding the percent of increase in the number of people 65 and over from 1900 to 1910. In exercise 2, you are finding the change in percent that the age groups were to the total population in 1900 and 1910.
4. Sample answer: Make a table that shows the percent of increase during each 10-year period. Find the average of the percents for all time periods Use that percent to find the population in 2050.
   

   Year	Population of previous decade	Population now	Percent of increase
   1910	3,080,000	3,949,000	28%
   1920	3,949,000	4,933,000	25%
   1930	4,933,000	6,634,000	34%
   1940	6,634,000	9,019,000	36%
   1950	9,019,000	12,269,000	36%
   1960	12,269,000	16,560,000	35%
   1970	16,560,000	19,980,000	21%
   1980	19,980,000	25,550,000	28%
   1990	25,550,000	31,079,000	22%
   2000	31,079,000	34,992,000	13%

   The average in column four is about 28%. Use this to predict for 2050.
   population in 2010 = 34,992,000 • 1.28 ≈ 44,789,760;
   population in 2020 = 44,789,760 • 1.28 ≈ 57,330,893;
   population in 2030 = 57,330,893 • 1.28 ≈ 73,383,543;
   population in 2040 = 73,383,543 • 1.28 ≈ 93,930,935;
   population in 2050 = 93,930,935 • 1.28 ≈ 120,231,597.
   This prediction is very different from the prediction using a line. This prediction is probably too high because the percent of increase has not been as great since 1970.