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THE UNITED STATES has long thought of itself as a nation of youth, and indeed, this country was founded by youth. In colonial times, the average age of the population was 16 years and most people never reached old age. Since then, life expectancy at birth has increased to 75 years. Yet given this potential for long life, youth has become an obsession. Americans idolize it, yearn impossibly for it, and discriminate in favor of it. But this nation is an aging society. The baby-boom generation (people born from 1945 to 1965), which constitutes one third of the US population, is advancing inevitably toward old age (Fig 1). And because of improvements in life expectancy, the elderly population is experiencing an explosive growth spurt that is unprecedented in history. The population group aged 65 years and older (with 31 million members) is now 10 times larger than it was in
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