Aging and Social Change

Abstract

This chapter discusses some aspects of the dynamic interplay between people growing older and society undergoing change, as the power of the new scientific perspective is attracting scholars from several disciplines. It deals with the compelling evidence that aging and social change are interrelated, and with some clues as to how the two processes–aging and social change–influence each other, suggesting certain mechanisms that link the two together. The most direct link between aging and social change is cohort flow, the endless succession through society of cohorts of people. One key mechanism connecting individual aging with social change, though widely misapprehended, is life-long socialization. In the 1930s, age 65 was arbitrarily built into the Social Security legislation; the appropriate age for Social Security is in question, and the age for mandatory retirement has been raised to 70 or omitted entirely.

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