THE IMPACTS OF THE AGING REVOLUTION ON COMMUNITIES
AND THEIR RESPONSES

There is a delicate balance that exists between social and personal needs, a balance that changes historically. The relative size of age strata within a community does not remain static, upsetting the previous balance. The changes in population size, both in relative and proportional size, such as the growing elderly population, exert pressures on both the physical and social environment. When the size of an age strata is large, like the growing aging population, the equilibrium between needs and services falls into a state of disequilibrium. Because of declining numbers of young people, local high schools in towns like Ackerly, Texas, now field 6-person football teams. Surplus schools may be converted into housing units for the elderly, student discounts may be replaced with senior discounts, and the lettering of highway signs may have to be increased.

Factoids:

• According to William Frey ("Mapping the Growth of Older America," Brookings Institution 2007), there will be a 49% increase of those 55-64 years of age
• By the late 1980s, over three million Americans lived in retirement communities of some sort, an increase of 300% in 12 years.
• Attempting to shed its retirement image, Miami Beach has privately funded advertising campaigns to beckon young people. In the mid-1980s, the city began charging $75 for ambulance runs and tried unsuccessfully to raise the price of seniors dances and to close a small library frequented by seniors.
• During Older Americans Month in 2000, Florida's Department of Elder Affairs announced its Elder Ready Communities Initiative, with the goal of having forty communities being certified as "elder ready" by 2006.

Los Angeles Seniors

Hanover Co, VA Services for Senior Citizens

NOVEL COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO THEIR OLD

Over the past two decades, I have followed a number of ways in which communities have responded to their elderly members. Some of these responses include:

• Student volunteers from a Bronx high school provide a regular escort service for their fearful elderly neighbors when they go out on errands;
• Homesharing programs have been established, matching young people who want low-cost or free housing with elderly persons seeking help with chores, companionship, or in-home nursing care. In Madison, Wisconsin, Independent Living (in existence since 1973) sets up pairings that go beyond matching basic needs to more tailored arrangements. For instance, a student from Colombia with language difficulties was matched with two retired English professors, and an older woman who speaks French was paired with a student planning to visit France the following year.
• In New York City, city authorities and the Lutheran Medical Center began a program that trained unemployed mothers to care for old persons who would otherwise have to stay in the hospital because they were not well enough to care for themselves.
• In Harbor Springs, Michigan, the local high school became one of the nation's first public high schools to try "gray integration."

SERVICES BY THE OLD:
HOW OLDER PERSONS HELP EACH OTHER & THE BROADER COMMUNITY

Contrary to stereotypes, the flow of services between older persons and their communities goes both ways (click here for analyses of how volunteerism varies by age). According to the 1994 AARP study referenced above we find fully one-half of American adults acknowledging the contributions of older people:

At the 2004 annual meetings of the Gerontology Society of America launched a five-year initiative, "Civic Engagement in an Older America," to study and encourage the civic participations of the old--particularly those of the Boomer generation.

• Senior Corps, which includes the Foster Grandparent Program
• Join Senior Service

• In Reading, Pennsylvania, the National Science Foundation granted a 2-way cable TV for elderly. For four hours a day, five days a week, older individuals interviewed area directors of Social Security, the mayor, councilmen, merchants, and every bureaucrat who touch their lives
• SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives)
• Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement

RESEARCH TOPICS

• Age integration or segregation?
• Behavioral settings, territorial ranges and niches of the old
• malls and the old: exercise groups before stores' opening; age-group occupancy by time of day

• Car Wars? Intergenerational relations on the road.  According to the 1994 AARP "Images of Aging" study we find:
  
     PERCENT AGREEING 
  DRIVERS 65+ HAVE FEW ACCIDENTS
  

  AGE:	MALES	FEMALES
  18-34	45%	41%
  35-49	51	42
  50-64	60	40
  65-74	62	74
  75+	65	63
  TOTAL	52%	46%

 

Mobility and Independence: Changes and Challenges for Older Drivers

• Neighborliness and the age-heterogeneity of neighborhoods. In 1993 in Worcester, Massachusetts, a 73-year-old recluse was found dead in her home. Authorities estimated that she had probably died four years earlier. Postal carriers kept delivering her mail through a slot in the door. One resident, assuming her neighbor was in a nursing home, hired a grandson to mow the lawn because the property had become such an eyesore.
• Architectural design considerations to enhance the independence of older persons. Although there are differences in our living environment needs across the life-cycle, many residences are designed for young singles and for procreative functions. Click here for range of living options for older adults.

Return to Social Gerontology Index