ABSTRACT
This unique volume brings together 20 critical essays on aging within the context of the broad social, political, and economic factors that help shape and determine the realities of growing old. Rather than viewing aging in isolation, it explores the social creation of old age dependency and the profound influence of race, gender, and social class on what it means to grow old. It looks too at such topics as the "biomedicalization" of aging; the role of business and the media in changing societal images of the old; the fact and fiction behind "senior power"; the multibillion dollar nursing home industry; and the role of advanced capitalist nations in creating economic dependency among elders in the Third World.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|64 pages
Introduction
part II|50 pages
New Images of the Old and the Debate Over Resource Allocation
part III|36 pages
Apocalyptic Demography and the Biomedicalization of Aging
chapter Chapter 9|16 pages
The Politics of Alzheimer's Disease: A Case Study In Apocalyptic Demography
part IV|56 pages
Critical Perspectives on Market Economy Health Care
chapter Chapter 12|18 pages
The Short Life and Painful Death of the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act
part V|64 pages
Race, Class, Gender, and Aging
part VI|51 pages
Retirement, Social Security, and Economic Dependency
chapter Chapter 17|20 pages
Retirement and the Moral Economy: An Historical Interpretation of the German Case
chapter Chapter 18|17 pages
Postwar Capitalism and the Extension of Social Security Into a Retirement Wage
chapter Chapter 19|11 pages
Dependency among Third World Elderly: A Need for new Direction in the Nineties
part VII|18 pages
Conclusion