1) Social gerontological research has expanded in parallel with rapid growth of an aging population since the 1940s (p. 37). The need to expand associated social concerns to accommodate this growing population has stimulated increased research into gerontological studies, such as the geographic distribution of the elderly in the United States, which is far from even. The Northeast leads with 14 percent of the population aged 65 and older, while western states have approximately 11 percent. Additionally, in 1998, while 18.3 percent of the population in Florida was over the age of 65, only 5.5 percent of the population of Alaska and 8.8 percent of the population of Utah was over 65 (p. 22).
As stated in Part One, the state-to-state statistical information of the elderly populations is important in determining the distribution of federal funding as well as the administration of federal programs (p. 22). Additionally, as it was pointed out in Chapter 1, growth in both numbers and proportions of older people requires the modification of both public and private policies for employment, retirement, healthcare, long-term care and other social services in an attempt to improve the quality of life people who are living longer (p. 37).
One of the areas of increased modification, for example, has been in the provision of transportation, or the increase of public transportation in some areas, to agencies that offer services to the elderly. As pointed out in Chapter 11, a larger majority of the older population lives in metropolitan areas, such as urban and suburban communities. A higher proportion of ethnic minorities tends to live in and around urban centers, while the greatest percentage of the elderly population overall tends to be in the suburbs (p. 331). One of the reasons the majority of the elderly live in and around metropolitan areas is their increased dependency on social services, which are more easily obtained in urban...