Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T12:31:09.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ideology of ‘Age/Race Wars’: Deconstructing a Social Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Meredith Minkler  and
Ann Robertson
Meredith Minkler
Affiliation:
Professor and Chair of Community Health Education, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, U.S.A.
Ann Robertson
Affiliation:
Doctoral candidate, Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Efforts in the United States to encourage divisiveness within the working class have been widely recognised as a key strategy in the war on welfare. This paper examines one aspect of this overall strategy, namely the creation of an ideology based on generational equity and ‘age/race wars’ thinking, which blames the old for poverty and economic hardship in the young. Attempts to frame problem analysis and policy deliberations within such an ideological framework are seen to be based on spurious assumptions concerning the relative financial well-being of the old, the role of elderly entitlements as a cause of poverty in minority children, and growing resentment of programmes for the old among minorities and youth.

This paper examines recent attempts to de-legitimate the claims of the elderly through the advancement of an ideology of age/race wars. The assumptions underlying this approach to policy are critiqued, and a case is made for developing an alternative framework which would stress the interdependence of generations, rather than age/race group competition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

And now for the fun years – but who will foot the bill? Time, 22 02, 1988.Google Scholar
Andrews, J. 1989. Poverty and Poor Health among Elderly Hispanic Americans. Commonwealth Fund Commission on Elderly People Living Alone, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Anon. 1989. Homelessness in the Bay Area: 10 points. Home Base, San Francisco, 1989 ABAG and Public Advocates.Google Scholar
Anon. 1990. Five Million Children: A Statistical Profile of our Poorest Young Children. National Center for Children in Poverty, New York.Google Scholar
Auletta, K. 1982. The Underclass. Random House, New York.Google Scholar
Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. Anchor, New York.Google Scholar
Binney, E. A. and Estes, C. L. 1988. The retreat of the state and its transfer of responsibility: the intergenerational war. International Journal of Health Services, 18, 83–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binstock, R. H. 1983. The aged as scapegoat. Gerontologist, 23, 136–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binstock, R. H. 1985. The oldest old: a fresh perspective or compassionate ageism evisited? Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 63, 420–541.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blaustein, A. I. (ed) 1982. The American Promise: Equal Justice and Economic Opportunity. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Block, F., Cloward, R., Ehrenreich, B. and Piven, F. F. 1987. The Mean Season. Pantheon Books, New York.Google Scholar
Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. 1988. The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarization of America. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Bould, S., Sanborn, B. and Reif, L. 1989. Eighty Five plus: The Oldest Old. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, California.Google Scholar
Brown, E. R. 1984. Medicare and Medicaid: the process, value and limits of health care reforms. In Minkler, M. and Estes, C. L. (eds.) Readings in the Political Economy of Aging, pp. 117–43. Baywood, New York.Google Scholar
Calasanti, T. M. and Bonanno, A. 1986. The social creation of dependence, pendency ratios, and the elderly in the United States: A Critical Analysis. Social Science and Medicine, 23, 1229–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callahan, D. 1987. Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society. Simon and Schuster, New York.Google Scholar
Chakravarty, S. N. and Weisman, , 1988. Consuming our children. Forbes, 11, 222–32.Google Scholar
Cole, T. 1988. The spectre of old age: history, politics and culture in America. Tikkun, 3, 14–18, 93–5.Google Scholar
Easterlin, R. A. 1987. The new age structure of poverty in America: permanent or transition? Population and Development Review, 06, 195–208.Google Scholar
Edelman, M. W. 1985. Meeting the needs of families and children: structural changes that require new social arrangements. (Statement before the Consumer Federation of America.) Children's Defense Fund, New York, 03 15, 1990.Google Scholar
Estes, C. L. 1979. The Aging Enterprise. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Estes, C. L. 1984. Austerity and aging: 1980 and beyond. In Minkler, M. and Estes, C. L. (eds) Readings in the Political Economy of Aging. Baywood Press, New York.Google Scholar
Gough, I. 1981. The Political Economy of the Welfare State. Macmillan Press, London.Google Scholar
Graebner, W. 1980. A History of Retirement. Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Guillemard, A-M. 1983. The making of old age policy in France. In Guillemard, A-M. (ed), Old Age and the Welfare State. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills.Google Scholar
Hayes-Bautista, D., Schinck, W. O. and Chapa, J. 1988. The Burden of Support: The Young Latino Population in an Aging Society. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, California.Google Scholar
Hess, J. L. 1990. Confessions of a greedy geezer. The Nation, 04, 437–56.Google Scholar
Hewitt, P. 1986. A Broken Promise. Brochure of Americans for Generation Equity. AGE, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Katz, M. B. 1986. In the Shadow of the Poor House: A Social History of Welfare in America. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Katz, M. B. 1988. The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. Pantheon Books, New York.Google Scholar
Kingson, E. 1988. Generational equity: an unexpected opportunity to broaden the politics of aging. The Gerontologist, 28, 765–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kingson, E., Hirshorn, B. A. and Cornman, J. 1986. Ties That Bind: The Interdependence of Generations in an Aging Society. Seven Locks Press, Cabin John, Maryland.Google Scholar
Kohli, M. 1987. Retirement and the moral economy: an historical interpretation of the German case. Journal of Aging Studies, 1, 125–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lamm, R. D. 1985. Mega-Traumas, America at the Year 2000. Houghton Muffin Company, Boston, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Longman, P. 1985. Justice between generations. The Atlantic Monthly, 06, 73–81.Google Scholar
Longman, P. 1986. The youth machine vs. the baby boomers: a scenario. The Futurist 20, 9.Google Scholar
Margolis, R. J. 1990. Risking Old Age in America. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.Google Scholar
Miller, S. M. 1976. The political economy of social problems: from the sixties to the seventies. Social Problems, 24, 131–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkler, M. 1984 Blaming the aged victim: the politics of retrenchment in times of fiscal conservation. In Minkler, M. and Estes, C. L. (eds) Readings in the Political Economy of Aging. Baywood Publishers, New York.Google Scholar
Minkler, M. and Stone, R. 1985. The feminization of poverty and older women. The rontologist, 25, 351–7.Google ScholarPubMed
Minkler, M. and Cole, T. Political and moral economy: not such strange bedfellows. In Minkler, M. and Estes, C. L. (eds) Critical Perspectives on Aging: The Political and Moral Economy of Growing Old. Baywood, New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Murray, D. 1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Myles, J. 1985. The aged and the welfare state: an essay in political demography. Paper presented at the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Aging, Paris.Google Scholar
Myles, J. 1988. Postwar capitalism and the extension of social security into a retirement wage. In Weir, M., Sholaorloff, A. and Skocpol, T. (eds) The Politics of Social Policy in the U.S. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, pp. 265–84.Google Scholar
Navarro, V. 1982. The crisis of the international capitalist order and its implications for the welfare state. International Journal of Health Services, 12, 169–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Navarro, V. 1987. Federal health policies in the U.S: an alternative explanation. Milbank Quarterly, 65, 81–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peterson, B. 1988. A note on old age pensions: demography and the distribution between generations. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 144, 333–42.Google Scholar
Phillipson, C. 1982. Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age. Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piven, F. F. and Cloward, R. A. 1982. The New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences. Pantheon Books, New York.Google Scholar
Piven, F. F. and Cloward, R. 1987. The contemporary relief debate. In Block, F. et al. The Mean Season. Pantheon Books, New York.Google Scholar
Pollack, R. F. 1986. Generational equity: the current debate. Presentation before the 32nd Annual Meeting of the American Society on Aging, San Francisco.Google Scholar
President's Council of Economic Advisers, 1985. Annual Report of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Preston, S. 1984. Children and the elderly in the U.S. Scientific American, 251, 44–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Quadagno, J. (1989). Generational equity and the politics of the welfare state. Politics and Society, 17, 353–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, A. 1990. The politics of Alzheimer's disease: a case study in apocalyptic demography. International Journal of Health Services, 20, 429–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryan, W. 1976. Blaming the Victim, second edition. Random House, New York.Google Scholar
Smith, L. 1987. The war between the generations. Fortune, 07, 78–82.Google Scholar
Taylor, H. 1986. Testimony before the House Committee on Aging, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Taylor, P. 1986. The coming conflict as we soak the young to enrich the old. Washington Post.Google Scholar
Torres-Gil, F. 1986. Hispanics: a special challenge. In Pifer, A. and Bronte, L. (eds) Our Aging Society. New York.Google Scholar
Torres-Gil, F. and Pynoos, J. 1986. Long-term care policy and interest group struggles. The Gerontologist, 26, 488–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Townsend, P. 1981. The structured dependency of the elderly: creation of social policy in the twentieth century. Ageing and Society, 1, 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census, 1987. Money Income and Poverty Status of Families and Persons in the United States, 1986. U.S. Department of Commerce, Current Population Reports, Series P–60, No. 157. U.S. Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989a. Current Population Reports: Poverty in the U.S. Series P–60, No. 163, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989b. Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 109th edition. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
U.S. Senate Special Commission on Aging 1986. Aging America: Trends and Projections, 1985–86. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Villers Foundation 1987. On the Other Side of Easy Street: Myths and Facts about the Economics of Old Age. The Villers Foundation, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Walker, A. 1983. Social policy and elderly people in Great Britain: the construction of dependent social and economic status in old age. In Guillemard, A-M. (ed.) Old Age and the Welfare State, pp. 143–67. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, California.Google Scholar
Wilensky, H. Personal communication. 3 03, 1990.Google Scholar