ABSTRACT
The major problems faced by the elderly in the United States are, in large measure, ones that are socially constructed as a result of the dominant societal conception of aging and the aged. The 1973 Older Americans Act amendments assigned existing state agencies on aging the responsibility for designating local planning and coordination agencies, which, in turn, were assigned responsibility for generating local resources. There is a popular perception in the United States that old age is a problem resulting largely from the biological and physiological decline of the aging individual. In the United States, not only has aging been defined as an individual problem, but old people themselves have been specifically defined as “the problem.” Increasingly, in the 1970’s, the formation of the problem of aging in America, as described, led to policies that are service strategies—with a highly medical character, and with power largely in the hands of service providers, through policies which provide them reimbursement.
