ABSTRACT
A political economy perspective on aging and old age emphasizes the broad implications of economic life for the aged and for society’s treatment of the elderly. The central challenge of the political economy of aging is to understand the character and significance of variations in the treatment of the aged and to relate them to broader societal trends. A major task is to understand how the aging process itself is influenced by the treatment and location of elders in society. The sociohistorical, political, and economic context in which persons age and become a “problem group” is relevant to understanding the relative influence of the state and class relations as they impinge upon the resources allocated to different subgroups of elders. The political economy perspective proposed here necessarily draws heavily on state theory and all varieties of neo-Weberian and neo-Marxist theoretical developments therein.
