ABSTRACT
There is a tradition among some social scientists of identifying with the underdogs and rallying our knowledge to their support. This chapter considers the economic condition, worldview, and perceptions of others held by the elderly as well as the perceptions some younger people hold of the elderly. Radner also provides a breakdown comparing the relatively poor with the relatively ridi. These data show no change between 1967 and 1985 in the overall income of the relatively poor who were under age sixty-five. Gordon Streib summarizes a different type of data. He informs us that in the late 1970s over 80 percent of elderly couples in the United States lived in a home they owned and over 80 percent of these owned them free of debt. This suggests something less than overriding poverty among elderly people especially when one considers the large amounts of tax free equity in those homes.
