Is it true that if you're near-sighted, your vision gets better as you get older?

I heard this from a relative and I'm wondering if it's a wives' tale.Is it true that if you're near-sighted, your vision gets better as you get older?
This is true, but it doesn't happen to a noticeable degree for everyone. What happens is that as you age the muscles that allow your eyes to focus get stiffer. As they tighten they pull in a direction that adjusts somewhat for nearsighted-ness.





The tightness also means you are less able to adjust for a range of diopters. You will lose the diopters for very close focusing first (e.g. stuff that is 2 inches from your eye). As you age you will lose more and more because the muscles are too stiff to focus on very near objects. For mildly nearsighted people, the loss of the near diopters is somewhat compensated by a gain in far diopters (thus the ';better vision';), but if the muscles get too stiff, then you lose the diopter for reading distance and you'll need reading glasses.