By Vincent Lim
Do people become more religious as they age?
To find the answer, the John Templeton Foundation has funded a new research study by Vern Bengtson, a senior scientist at the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the USC School of Social Work.
“We’re asking people to reflect on how their religious and spiritual lives may have changed as they have grown older,” said Bengtson, holder of the AARP/University Chair of Gerontology Emeritus at the USC Davis School of Gerontology . “Our hypothesis is that the post-retirement years are an occasion for people to more seriously reflect about the meaning of life and their religious and spiritual commitments.”
Bengtson and longtime USC colleague Merril Silverstein, now the Marjorie Cantor Endowed Professor in Aging at Syracuse University, are co-investigators on the three-year $1.5 million project to better understand religious beliefs, particularly how people in their golden years identify with a religion and practice it, and how faith affects overall health and well-being as people approach death.