The older you are, the less afraid you are of dying and being in pain at the end of life .
Younger people are more afraid of dying and being in pain at the end of life than older people.
The survey also found that younger people are more afraid than older people of having their death prolonged by artificial means and of depleting the family's finances to pay for health care at the end of life. Dying is just the last point on that continuum. George Bouklas, Ph.D., a psychotherapist and author of Psychotherapy With the Elderly, says practicality is behind the finding that older people are less afraid of depleting the family's finances to pay for care. As people get older and have health-care needs, they can't worry about money. They need to be tended to.