ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that as we approach the year 2000, diversity is the hallmark of our aging society. It will not come as a shock to any informed observer that a population of 30 million person’s age 65-plus is very heterogeneous. The policy implication of this challenge, simply stated, is that diversity does not stop at the edge of ethnic status. Policies and programs over the past several decades have succeeded in lowering the poverty rate within the older population to the extent that, at about 12 percent, it is about the same as for the US population as a whole. And so in aging policies, as in other domains of social policy, we have programs that are national in scope and others that are designed to be responsive to the diversity across and within communities.
