This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

6.5 Problems Facing Older Americans



LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. 
   Present a brief sociodemographic profile of the US elderly.
   
2. 
   Discuss the several problems experienced by the US elderly.
   
3. 
   Describe how the social attitudes of older Americans generally differ from those of younger Americans.
   

We now turn our attention to older people in the United States. We first sketch a demographic profile of our elderly and then examine some of the problems they face because of their age and because of ageism.

Who Are the Elderly?

Table 6.2 "Demographic Composition of the Elderly, 2010" presents the demographic composition of Americans aged 65 or older. Slightly more than half the elderly are 65–74 years of age, and about 57 percent are female, reflecting males’ shorter life spans as discussed earlier. About 80 percent of the elderly are non-Latino whites, compared to about 66 percent in the population as a whole; 8.6 percent are African American, compared to about 13 percent of the population; and 7.0 percent are Latino, compared to 15 percent of the population. The greater proportion of whites among the elderly and lower proportions of African Americans and Latinos reflects these groups’ life expectancy differences discussed earlier and also their differences in birth rates.

Table 6.2 Demographic Composition of the Elderly, 2010

Age
65–74 years	52.3%
75–84 years	33.4%
85 years and over	14.3%
Gender
Female	56.9%
Male	43.1%