THE SPECIAL YEARS : 50 AND BEYOND: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE : Busy, Active, Happy : Not Only Are People Living Longer, but a New Times Poll Finds That Most Seniors Feel That They Are Also Living Better

No one expects retirement to be particularly pleasant. The myth in America is that retirees are old folks who are bored (and boring). They are lonely and addled; they have little to talk about, except their failing health, and nothing to do, except impose on the younger generation. In the American view of things, becoming a senior citizen practically means giving up one’s life, to say nothing of one’s status in the world.

No one is more keenly aware of how bleak old age can be than are middle-aged people who are about to round the corner into senior status. And no one could be more wrong.

Once they have actually made the leap into retirement, the vast majority of Americans find the leisure years aren’t so bad after all, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll. In fact, the majority of senior citizens are busy, active in sports and quite happy, thank you, that they don’t have to live with their children. In other words, life in the senior years is not all that much different than it was in the middle years--and may be even a little better.

As one retired man put it not long ago: “There is so much to do now, I wonder how in the world I ever had time to work.”

The popular image of the elderly being dumped into nursing homes, living in despair and desolution simply is not the case, according to the portrait older people draw of themselves.

The Times Poll, directed by I.A. Lewis, interviewed a cross-section sample of 2,269 American adults of all ages, plus an additional 781 people over the age of 50. The “oversample” of the middle-aged and elderly was added to provide greater statistical precision to their opinions. The margin of error for the survey was 3 percentage points in either direction.

By all accounts, the poll found, Americans are learning to age gracefully. And that is good news since today’s average 50-year-old man can now expect to live another 29 or 30 years and the average 50-year-old woman another 32 or so years, which is certainly longer than their grandparents or even parents lived. Most Americans born around the turn of the century did not make it much past the age of 40 or 50, according to Census Bureau averages. By the middle of the next century, the average life expectancy will be into the 90s, by some estimates.

Not only is life getting longer for most people, but it is also getting better, says James M. Thompson, manager of consumer affairs for the American Assn. of Retired Persons.

Time was when people assumed that being old meant living in loneliness, on a “fixed income” or in outright poverty. Today, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the 62 million Americans who are aged 50 and over not only have plenty of energy to expend but that they also, at least as a group, have considerable money to spend as well.

According to estimates by the AARP and other groups, the over-50 population has a combined income of $800 billion, it controls half the discretionary income in the United States and three-quarters of the financial assets, which is why it is becoming known to advertisers as the new “Golden Market,” Thompson says.

What do people over the age of 50 do with all their money and free time?

Nearly two-thirds of middle-aged Americans, of course, continue to work. But by the time, they reach 65, the overwhelming majority, 84%, have left the work force, according to the Times Poll.

Many people acknowledge that they are not thrilled with the prospect of retiring. More than half of the people of all ages say that when people stop working, they lose their identity. And more than 40% believe retirement brings on early death.

Despite the fears of what retirement might bring, the overwhelming majority of people over 50 want to live on their own, rather than in planned retirement communities or with their children.

But the middle-aged and elderly do spend time with their children. In fact, three out of four people over the age of 50 report having just about the right amount of contact with their children, thus “dispelling the notion that most old people are abandoned and lonely,” Lewis said.

Even if they are widowed, the majority of middle-aged and elderly people are content to live on their own, rather than remarry. Their reasons: they are set in their ways and, anyway, there aren’t so many great partners to choose from.

Whether they are living on their own or with others, a remarkable number of people over the age of 50 spend at least some portion of their leisure hours participating in sports and other physical activities. When asked what their favorite form of recreation was, 58% of people between the ages of 50 and 64 name fishing, walking, golf, swimming, tennis and other physical activities.

Those who are over 65 admit to slowing down a bit--but not much. Just under half, 47%, of those 65 and over say they also prefer physical activity to more passive forms of recreation, such as travel or sewing or reading.

The single most popular activity of the senior set, however, is socializing. Meeting friends or talking to them on the telephone is the first choice of 27% of those 65 and over, and 17% of those 50 to 65.

There may be some disappointments in retirement that people aren’t prepared for.

Before leaving their jobs, for example, nearly two-thirds of people say they expected to somehow continue to earn money in retirement, whereas only a fifth of those who are actually retired are, in fact, making money.

Despite the gap between those who think they will earn extra income and those who actually do, people who are retired, by a margin of 2 to 1, say their savings are adequate for their needs. Of those who say their savings are not sufficient, over half report incomes below the poverty line.

Although there are certainly many extremely well-to-do people over 65, what seems to keep many senior citizens afloat financially are Social Security payments. In fact, according to AARP, the Social Security program is the primary reason that the financial status of the elderly has improved so dramatically in the past 25 years.

In 1959, according the Census Bureau, 35% of older Americans--one in every three--were poor. Today, the Times Poll found, the figure is closer to 13%, contrasted with about 8% for the nation as a whole.

So important has Social Security become to the elderly that more than half of those over 50 say they would change their allegiance away from political candidates who supported a tax on Social Security benefits or opposed cost-of-living increases in the program.

Unlike Social Security, in which the middle-aged and elderly are nearly unanimous in their views, sex is an issue that divides people.

Although they were not asked directly about their own sexual preferences or activities, people who participated in the Times Poll were asked to speculate on the sexual activities of people over the age of 65.

About a third of those over the age of 50 think “almost all or many” elderly people have very active sexual lives; slightly more than a third think “about half” of the elderly have active sexual lives; slightly less than a third say they are “not sure.”

Compared to four years ago, people today are much more likely to think that the elderly are having sex, yet Americans as a whole indicate they are more moralistic today than they were three years ago. (More than two-thirds of all Americans today, for example, think that sex outside marriage is wrong at least some of the time, if not all of the time, compared to only about half who held such strict views only four years ago.)

By and large, people over the age of 50 also think they are more strait-laced than American youth. They are more religious than their younger cohorts; they smoke less and drink less.

A slightly larger fraction of the elderly than young or middle-aged people say they take too many over-the-counter and prescription drugs. But the extremely low percentage of the elderly who admit to taking too much medication--only 7%--suggests they may not be accurately reporting their actual behavior. Recent medical studies have shown that people over 65 are by far the largest prescription drug consumers in the United States, and that over-medication is one of the most pervasive and serious health problems facing the elderly today.

Illness is a major issue in aging. Studies have shown that each year after the age of 30, people become increasingly susceptible to disease, so that by the time they are 65, an estimated 80% of the American population has some kind of chronic health problem, ranging from arthritis to heart disease and from hypertension to hearing impairments.

But the elderly, by and large, do not worry about the illnesses that are most likely to affect them. Cancer, AIDS and drugs, they say, are society’s worst health problems. Heart disease, the number one killer of the elderly, ranks a distant fourth in the list of illnesses about which the elderly worry.