Linda S. Whitton

Finding the Elder Voice in Social Legislation

At the onset of the twentieth century, there existed no federal legislation in the United States to provide income maintenance or health care coverage based upon advanced age. Only in the last 65 years have we created age-based entitlements such as Social Security, enacted in 1935, and Medicare, enacted in 1965. Given the current public debate about whether and in what form these programs should continue, this — the commencement of the twenty-first century — is a prime time for retrospective reflection upon social legislation and our country’s “aging culture,” a term used broadly in this context to refer to collective beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes about aging and those we would label as aged or elderly.