A new University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study has deemed that people who are entering their 60s may have far more disabilities today than their counterparts did in previous generations.

The researchers said that the findings may be due in part to changing American demographics.

In the study, researchers found that the cohort of individuals between the ages of 60 and 69 exhibited increases in several types of disabilities over time.

On the other hand, those between the ages of 70 and 79 and those aged 80 and over saw no significant increases - and in some cases exhibited fewer disabilities than their previous cohorts.

The researchers said that while the study focused on groups born prior to the post-World War II Baby Boom, the findings hold "significant and sobering implications" for health care because they suggest that people now entering their 60s could have even more disabilities, putting an added burden on an already fragile system and boosting health costs for society as a whole.

"If this is true, it's something we need to address. If this trend continues unchecked, it will put increasing pressure on our society to take care of these disabled individuals. This would just put more of a burden on the health care system to address the higher levels of these problems," said Teresa Seeman, the study's principal investigator.

The researchers used two sets of data - the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) for 1988 and 1999 - to examine how disabilities for the three groups of adults aged 60, 70, and 80 and older had changed over time.