ABSTRACT
A specter is haunting America—the specter of old age. The fiscal dilemma of aging policy originated in the late 1970s, when high inflation and slow economic growth rapidly drained Social Security trust funds. Social Security quickly lost its status as an untouchable “sacred cow.” Emphasizing that the ratio of beneficiaries to workers had dropped from 1:40 in 1940 to 1:3.3 in 1980, neoconservatives raised the specter of an aging society. Ageists and their critics share a common social and cultural history and have more in common than is generally realized. In America, this history begins with the consolidation of a middle-class value system in the nineteenth century. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the revolt against patriarchy and communalism struck hard at old age, a convenient symbol of hierarchical authority. But if old age in America had suffered only the usual misfortune of being identified with an old order, the impact might have been short-lived.
