Old Age in the New Land : The American Experience since 1790 / / W. Andrew Achenbaum.

• Author: Achenbaum, W. Andrew.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xii, 237 pages) :; illustrations
• Notes: The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License; Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

Drawing on a wide range of sources from social, intellectual, and political history, W. Andrew Achenbaum analyzes the changing fates and fortunes of America's elderly in the course of its history. By providing a historical perspective on society's conceptions of aging—and its effects on hu...

Table of Contents

• pt. I: Changing perceptions of the aged's roles in nineteenth-century America
• The usefulness of old age
• Variations on a theme
• The obsolescence of old age
• pt. II: The demographic and socioeconomic dimensions of old age
• The rhetoric and realities of growing old diverge in nineteenth-century America
• Old age becomes "modern" in twentieth-century America
• pt. III: Contemporary old age in historical perspective
• Old age becomes a national problem
• Social Security: A novel solution for the problem of America's aged
• Old age in the United States since Social Security.