ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that public policy targets benefits for the elderly by class and serves as “an intervening variable to ensure status maintenance in old age”. The risks and vulnerabilities incurred with old age have generated greater demands for public service/welfare measures. Government has had to assume an increased protective role. There is a pervading belief that all the variables of old age are experienced fairly uniformly and that seniority is the demarcation line beyond which all class and status attainment variables become moot. Public policy measures directed at the elderly clearly demonstrate this phenomenon; even in programs for the poor/marginal class, the representation of minorities is far less than their reported objective needs would indicate. A benefit structure based on political and subjective entitlement standards like class is not effective for all older persons. The healthcare program for the poor is Medicaid, also means-tested. Thirty percent of Medicaid expenditures are directed to the poor elderly, primarily for institutional care.
