When We Gain the Right to Die 29430 Neither for Love nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill 297
31 Spending on Children and the Elderly 365
32 A Generational War Over the Budget? It’s Hard to See It in the Numbers 368
33 The Generational Equity Debate 371
34 The Necessity and Desirability of Social Security Reform 400
35 Social Security Reform and Benefit Adequacy 403
36 Social Security for Yesterday’s Family? 409
37 The Future of Social Security: Proposals You Should Know About 411
38 This New Social Security Bill Could Make Social Security Even Better 414
39 The Social Security 2100 Act Would Significantly Harm Americans 415
40 Framework for Considering Productive Aging and Work 444
41 Prime Time 450
42 Moving Toward a Creative Retirement 452
43 The Fading Dream of Retirement 454
44 Boomsday 473
45 Baby Boomers: From Great Expectations to a Crisis of Meaning 474
46 The Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders 477
47 The Long Baby Boom: An Optimistic Vision for a Graying Generation 479
48 Overview of the Boomer Market 493
49 Age Branding 494
50 The Marketplace of Memory: What the Brain Fitness Technology Industry Says About Us and How We Can Do Better 499
51 No Truth to the Fountain of Youth 502
Preface
As we prepared this 10th edition of Aging: Concepts and Controversies, we were keenly aware of the many significant national and global issues that dwell in the background: worsening climate change; the immigration crisis in North America and Europe; the resurgence of totalitarianism, populism, and racism; public health emergencies; and ongoing economic and political instability. While none of these issues are “aging issues” per se, they are inarguably large scale human issues that can have immediate and long-term impact at both the individual and collective levels in terms of access to resources, opportunity structures, and quality of life as we travel through the life course.
Since the previous edition of this book, the oldest members of the baby boom generation have begun collecting Social Security, and the process of population aging is well under way. Given current demographic trends, it is likely that tens of thousands of Americans born after the year 2000 will live to see the dawn of another century, the 22nd. Many of you who are reading this book will spend the greatest part of your lives experiencing dramatic changes already evident in telecommunications, biotechnology, and genetics. This ever-accelerating change will produce even more debate and controversy about how we are to live and participate in an aging society and in the 21st century.
In this edition of the book, we use the same unique approach that inspired earlier editions in order to consider and respond to perennial and new public debates and social conditions that shape how we think about and experience aging. This approach entails presenting key ideas and content from gerontology as opportunities for critical thinking. Our aim is to encourage you to not only encounter basic ideas but also reflect more deeply on issues raised by the study of aging.
As we move further into the 21st century with a population growing older not only in North America but also globally, we all have a stake in developing a better understanding of the subject (Perkinson, 2013). In this book we intentionally focus on issues of interest to all of us as citizens and as educated human beings, not just as potential gerontologists or professional service providers. From the opening chapter, we encourage you to see aging not as a fixed period of life but as a process beginning at birth and extending over the entire life course. This open-ended quality of human aging is a theme woven throughout the book: from biological experiments on extending the lifespan to difficult choices about allocation of health care resources, to questions about the meaning of becoming and “older person.”
The multiple possibilities for how we might age both as individuals and as a society create complex choices that are important for all of us. New thinking is needed if we are to grasp and respond to the issues at stake. That is why the pedagogical design of this book focuses on controversies and questions, rather than on assimilating facts or coming up with a single “correct” view about aging or older people. We selected the supplemental readings to accentuate contrast and conflict and to stimulate faculty and students to think more deeply about what is at stake in the debates presented here. In contrast to most textbooks, we direct your attention toward original sources and encourage you and your instructor to construct the perspectives for responding to the claims made in those original texts.
The point is not to find the single “right answer” raised in the contrasting perspectives and debates about the controversies we feature in this book. Rather, as you become engaged in the debates, you will appreciate the need for having the factual background necessary to make responsible judgments and interpretations. That is the purpose of the three major chapters, the Basic Concepts sections, around which the book’s controversies are organized. The data and conceptual frameworks offered in these chapters will help you make sense of the controversies, understand their origin, engage in critical thinking, and, finally, develop your own views. The introductions preceding each controversy and the questions that follow reinforce the essential link between factual knowledge and interpretation at the heart of the book. This book, then, can best be seen as a textbook constructed to provide drama and compelling interest for the reader. It is structured to encourage a style of teaching and learning that goes beyond conveying facts and methods. The goal is nothing more, or less, than critical thinking about gerontology.
An Invitation to Think Critically About Gerontology (and About This Book!)
In this book, we offer an introduction to the major foundational concepts and perspectives in the field of gerontology. In addition, we pose provocative questions about different aspects of aging at the individual and societal levels. These questions point to perennial and contemporary “controversies” about aging.
You will soon notice that there are multiple, often contrasting or contradictory answers to the questions we pose about these controversies, such as rationing health care for older people or the meaning of old age. You might also notice that for many of the topics we discuss, the research is far from conclusive; in fact, knowledge about aging is always emerging and is at best partial and provisional. Why? Because aging is a complex, multifaceted process that unfolds over the entire human life course, and the study of aging is complex as well.
We invite you to approach this complexity as an opportunity to practice critical thinking. When we think critically, we move beyond the surface of the information presented and dig more deeply to discover the underlying assumptions beneath the information, as well as to consider the implications of putting the information into action. Critical thinking embraces open-mindedness about new or confusing perspectives and empathy to imagine how it is that others might come to their beliefs, opinions, and assumptions about aging. Critical thinking can also be used as a tool to reflect on one’s own ideas about aging and to be more actively engaged in learning about gerontology.
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