The formal support system includes organizations or agencies established around a bureaucratic structure that provides services to elderly clients.  include meals on wheels, in home health care, free legal counseling and senior citizens centers

informal support system the networks of families, friends,a nd neigbors that provide both emotional support, including making the individual feel loved wanted, and comforted, and instrumental support in managing daily activities.

Family structure today includes an increasing number of generations with fewer members.  A visual image is tht of a beanpole:  tall and skinny

A narrow family struture where from the base of one couple, fewere children and grandchildren will emerge.  This family contains fewer aunts, uncles, brothers in-law, and coursins for example. 

Family relations is the norm of filial responsbility refers to the obligation that children have toward their parents, especially in terms of meeting their needs in later life.  In the U.S., it is generally expected that when all other options are unavailable adult childlren will provide for their aging parents financially and physically. 

There is a strong sense in the family rhetoric that the crare provided by a parent to a dependent child is "paid back" by the child caring for the parent in old age.  80% of informal care to the aged is provided by kin. 

Tpes of grandparenting:

Remote Grandparenting:  Grandparents who exhibit the remote style of grandparenting often do so not ut of choice but by the sheer fact that they tend to live a considerable distance froom their chidren and grandchildren.  Some grandparents exhibit aa remote style when they live quite close to their grandchildren but are emotionally distant frm tehir children for any number of  reasons or have a reserved persona in general.

Companionate Grandparenting:  Grandpareents who exhibit this style of interactin try to be as involved with their grandchildren as possbile but simultaneously try not to interfere in the lives of their children and grandchildren.  these grandparents emphasize a warm and lvoing relationship witjh their grandchildren and, free from most of the responsibilities of child-rearing, focus on pleasurable relations.  They ar as much friends as grandparents.

Involved Grandparenting:  Often acting more as a surrogate parent, the involved grandparent engages in, as well as supervises, activities with the grandchildren, offers advice to children and grandchildren, and in general holds a position of authority within the family.

Age:  younger grandparents tend to have more companionate and involved relationships with their grandchildren, in part because of the closeness of the mother-daughter relationship in general.

Gender:  Relationships with grandparents tend to be sex-typed, with grandmothers having more intimiate relationships and grandfathers engaging in more mentoring and instrumental tasks with grandchildren.

Race:  African American grandparents tend to have more involved relationships with their grandchildren in part because suh involvement is a repsonse to the disadvantage that many African American parents face.

Grandparenthood is the "boom" of the new beanpole family 

The role conflict that may result when oone has to care for both an aging parent and dependent children has been identified as a potential problem by the term "sandwich generation" - caught between the task of rearing one generation and poroving old-age care for another.  As engaging in both childrearing and caregiving is most often done by women, identifited this role conflict as being women in the middle.

1. The peak years in which one provides care to an elderly parent are between  the ages 45 and 54, when about 17 percent of this age group has a disabled parent (who tends to be iin the oldest-old age group).  By this age, most women have raised their children beyond the labor-intensive years of early childhood and into adolescence or young adulthood, when p arental demands many be less.

2.  As longevity increases and disability is delayed, the onset of caregiving responsbilities should shift to later ages.  Thus, the onset of caregiving is, being delayed

3.  The current generation of older adults has a larger number of potential adult-child caregivers because they gave birth to the baby boom.  Thus, out of all of the households with young children, few will actually become the one responsible for the care of a disabled parent.

Disenchanted with the characteristic unstructured time and lack of normative obligations, many older adults seek out productive activities after retirement.

1. Name and describe two options retirees have for productive activities.
2. Comment on who has these options available to them and why.

Many women who work for pay exhibit interrupted work patterns including mid-life career entry, intermittent employment throughout the work cycle, and frequent job changes.  Erratic work history is most often the consequences  of childbearing and childrearing, which cause may women to delay or interrupt their work careers. 

Women are more likely than men to participate iin a broad range of unpaid activities that produce valued goods and services yet are not included in national assessments of their productivity. 

Women are responsible for the majority of housework. 

 Among married couples, 80% of the unpaid housework are performed by wives.

women spend more time on unpaid work, including housework, childcare, childrearing, volunteer activities, than older men. They are also more active in religious and voluntary organizations.   Elderly men are more likely to pursue paid employment and to spend more time doing, yard work and household mainteance tasks.

A range of definition exist.  Here the term implies the termination of paid employment and the acquisition of benefits fromo public or private sources that the retiree is entitled to as a condition of previous employment.

1.  Occupation type: 

2. Income

3. Health

4. Family responsibilities

That each of these factors can and does interact with the others to produce variations in retirement timing.  Access to an alternative source of income-be a private prension, assrts, or Social Security-Appears to be the dominant consideration,. 

It is a blurred transition.  

A transition that some take with bridge jobs.  Going from full time to part time to ease into retirement.

Often describe an itital anticipation of "free time" and an opportunity to do what they "want to do".  Developed a stage model of the retiremnt process denoting the period initially following retirement as the "honeymoon phas". the new retiree is "rady to 'do it all".  this homenymoon phase is often one in which retirees feel a gread deal of satisfaction that a lifetime of hard work has paid off and now they are enjoying the fruits of their labors - goin on "vacation" continues, many find that they new  routine is not very satisfying and that the "free time" is difficult to fill day after day.  this phase emerges when the retiress realizes that the expectation of retirement as leisure is not being met and that thteir sense of worth, tied to paid work for most of the life cycle, is diminished.  

The loss of the productive role with retirement often means that older adults experiencing this disenchantment seek out new forms of productive activities. 

older women are not only at higher risk of living below poverty than men are, but they are even more likely to be living near poverty.

widowed, divorced or never married

disrupt in labor-force

Lower wages of women compared to men mean tht any benefits that do accrue are likely to be lower in value than would be eqivalent benefits for men.

The Social Security system is designed to be gender-neutral, allother things being equal-butall things are not equal.

Women's greater responsibility for caregiving, their concentration in marginalized segments of the work force, and the increasing instability of marriage, lead many women to be systematiclaly impoverished under the current system.  Social trends toward divorce and a service-based economy and the trend away from personal savings, suggest that the situation of elderly women will not improve, despite greater labor-force participation rates.  while 60% of women over age 65 will qualify for benefits in their own right by the year 2060, 40 percent of women will still be dependent on spousal benefits. 

Social Security in part contributes to the feminization of poverty. 

Age discrimination is a serious problem

Age discrimination in the workplace is illegal

In a period of economic Darwinism, the mature worker is considered expendable.  The mature worker is also considered less prepared for the changing technological advances occurring in the workplace.  Second, there is a growing intolerance toward aing workers.  As younger workers question for future viability of the Social Security system, the current recipients become easy scapegoats.  Third, demographic changes will occur as a result of population aging.   For example, the baby boom eneration will begin to turn 65 in the year 2011.  If, at that point, the economy is unable to support an increasing number of elderly who need to rremain in the workforce, intergenerational conflict over the availability of jobs may emerge.  Fourth, discrimination will continue because the value associated to decline in American society.

Age discrimination occurs as a result of any one of these factors.  Not only is the status of the elderly devalued in Ameican society, but the availabilty of economic role opportunties is also limited.  Increasingly, the mature worker is left with few occcupational options.  One available option is that of retirement. 

A shift from infectious disease as the primary cause of death to chronic disease as the major cause of disability and death.

Three distinct stages in the health of human population across time.

1. the first stage is the age of pestilence and famine - best known  smallpox, measles, yellow-fever, typhus,

2.  Age of infectious and parasite disease - pneumonia, tuberculosis, and influenza 

3. age of man-made and degenerative diseases - infectious diseases, chronic diseases emerge as the major cause of disease. 

Functional abililty refers to the capacity of an individual to manage their lives and erform the daily tasks necessary to live independently, without the assistance of another person. 

(ADL) Activities of Daily living - measures the extent to which people need assistance with seven personal-care tasks - bathing, dressing and eating, getting in and out of bed or chairs, getting to and from the toilet and using the toilet, walking, and getting around  outside

(IADL) Instrumental activities of daily living - scale measures the ability to manage a household independently.  The six activities that comprise the scale are - preparing one's own meals, shopping for groceries or personal items, managing one's mone, using the telephone, doing heavy housework (such as washing floors and windows) and doing light housework (such as doing dishes, straightening up or dusting.

Morbidity - a disease or illness

The increase in active life expectancy corresponds with the compression of morbidity thesis -  flows out of the epidemiological transition.  The compression of morbidity thesis predicts that, because the human life span- the maximum  number of years the human species can live - is fixed, improvements in prevention of man-made and degenerative diseases will increasingly confine disability t a smaller and smaller fraction of the life course. 

prevent the onset of chronic conditions through improvements in health-related behaviors earlier in the life course. 

In general, class based interests are crouched in the political process of the United States and the politics of aging mirrors this fact. 

The images of "greedy geezer" and the "needy grandmothers" represent the duality of the political context of aging, including the competing interests among the members of the power elite. 

(AARP) American Association of Retired persons -- identified issues of concern to white-collar, middle-class, and profesional-status retirees.   AARP generally takes a nonpartisan stances in national electoral politics.

(NCSC) The National council of Senior Citizens - much smaller than AARP-  membership primarily from the blue-collar working-class elderly.  Lobbying efforts of the NCSC reflect its constituency.

The Gray Panthers - small - have taken on activist approach to problems encountered by the elderly in the United States. 

The purpose is to discuss ways to allow those in power to define what aspects of aging constitutes a social problem, the elderly must become involved in the political process and redefine a more accurate portrayal of the elderly in American society. 

Purpose is for politicians to address issues with the elderly

Social Security Amendment of 1983

1. It reduced the death benefit of Social Security $250, payable only to a surviving spouse or adult child. 

2. It eliminated the floor on minimum benefits for low-income retirees, so benefits are calculated solely on the basis of the replacement rate.

3.  It enacted a general increase int he age of full eligibility for Social Security benefits from age 65 to age 66 by the year 2009 and then to age 67 by the year 2027.

4. It maintained eligibility for early retirement at age 62 but gradually increased the penalty for withdrawing benefits from 20 percent to 30 percent, in concert with the changing age-eligiblity for full benefits.   People who choose to take early retirement are discouraged from doing so by the benefit reduction.

There are three main proposals under this heading currently

1. Increase revenue by raising taxes

2. Decrease the amount of benefits to the affluent

3. Raise the age of eligibility to 70

The basic argument of those subscribing the "greedy geezer" image generally advocate dismantling the Social Security program in favor of privatization.  Privatization involves a small base benefit paid to older adults on the basis of age eligibility (social assistance) with the remainder of economoic support coming from the dividends of a personal security account.  Workers would be repsonsible  for contributing a specified percentage of their income (5-10 percent) to a government-managed  "personal security account," which proponents speculate would receive a higher return than the Social Security Administration currently does, and would receive a monthly payment from this account upon retirement. 

This scheme would radically alter old-age security in the United States, moving form shared risks across the life course to individual responsibility-consistent with the underlying premise of those subscribing to the "greedy-geezer" idealogy.