From the Impoverished to the Entitled: the Experience and Meaning of Old Age in America Since the 1950S
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From the Impoverished to the Entitled: The Experience and Meaning of Old Age in America since the 1950s By Copyright 2012 Jason G. Roe Submitted to the graduate degree program in the Department of History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Jeffrey Moran ________________________________ Dr. Sheyda Jahanbani ________________________________ Dr. Christopher Crenner ________________________________ Dr. Jacob Dorman ________________________________ Dr. Shawn Alexander Date Defended: 02 April 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Jason G. Roe certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: From the Impoverished to the Entitled: The Experience and Meaning of Old Age in America since the 1950s ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Jeffrey Moran Date approved: 02 April 2012 ii Abstract With more than seventy million individuals, the baby boom generation is rapidly approaching traditional retirement age and threatening to strain America's public and private resources. Within the context of Social Security and Medicare, the subject of later life has become one of the most pressing issues of our time. But these potential fiscal problems are not just the result of natural aging; rather, they were caused by historic developments that encouraged most individuals to retire in their mid-sixties, regardless of their personal financial status, physical health, or career ambitions. This project argues that these assumptions about retirement emerged from political and social developments that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to those decades, a majority of Americans over the age of sixty-five continued to work as long as they were physically able and could find employment. For the first time in the 1950s, retirement for the middle-class began to emerge as a common experience, centering more heavily on leisure, consumerism, and self-fulfillment. Middle-class retirement developed out of a confluence of events, including the widespread adoption of mandatory retirement policies in the workplace, growing Social Security payments that provided supplemental income for leisurely retirements, marketer’s efforts to promote the retirement industry, the emergence of a "senior lobby" led by AARP, and the creation of Medicare in 1965, which greatly relieved the financial burden of health issues in later life. In short, retirement transformed from something enjoyed by economic elites into an institution that a majority of middle-class Americans could experience and quite possibly enjoy. A final point of analysis that permeates this project is the concept of entitlement, or a social insurance or earned benefits model. Politicians could justify expansion of programs benefiting the aged middle-class because the recipients themselves had paid into trust funds in iii their younger working years, thereby earning their benefits. I argue that this entitlement ideology explains the enduring public approval for Social Security and Medicare in the face of politically conservative attacks, especially when compared with less popular welfare programs that in the popular mind are associated with minorities rather than middle-class white recipients. iv Acknowledgements I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of the people who have made this project possible. I first want to thank my four grandparents and three great-grandparents, whose collective examples have illustrated the vitality and sense of purpose that is possible in later life. Their lives have provided a fount of inspiration for this project. As a child I observed them traveling, volunteering for the community and church, and generally living an active and meaningful lifestyle that far surpassed most individuals' ambitions for any stage of life. More practically and more importantly, my grandparents served as supplemental parents as I grew and learned life's lessons. The rest of my family members have made extensive contributions to my education and to this project specifically. In addition to granting me an ideal upbringing, my parents, Dave and Debbie, provided generous financial and emotional support throughout college and graduate school. My in-laws have tolerated numerous weekend visits in which I occupied my time grading papers, reading, or otherwise neglecting my social responsibilities. My wife, Lindsey, patiently and lovingly endured countless evenings with my attention turned to my studies and only taking a break for food. If she was not a great chef, and thereby able to pull me away from my work, I would have starved during the course of this project. She has also tolerated the fact that graduate study placed me on the career slow-track for more than half a decade. No one has been more influential in shaping the professional aspects of this project than my advisor, Jeff Moran. He encouraged me to take a more expansive approach to my scholarship, incorporating social history, policy history, and political history into one (hopefully coherent) body of scholarship. The rest of my committee members similarly planted ideas into this work. Sheyda Jahanbani helped me conceptualize my proposal as a story of senior citizens v rising out of poverty. Chris Crenner helped me acquire a background knowledge of health issues, cultural meanings of health and aging, and the American health care system. Finally, Jake Dorman and Shawn Alexander challenged my preconceptions about the interplay of class, race, and aging. Equally important were the archivists at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. In addition to intellectual contributions, all research requires the tangible input of funding, and I have been extremely fortunate in this regard. The Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas has sponsored me with the Richard and Jeanette Sias Graduate Fellowship, which is a dissertation completion fellowship usually granted to just one humanities student each year. Beyond a living stipend and tuition waiver, the fellowship provided me with a quiet and spacious office to house my innumerable books, a stimulating intellectual environment among faculty fellows, the invaluable support of the Hall Center staff and administration, and the opportunity to participate in research presentations and seminars. The individuals affiliated with the Hall Center who made deep contributions to my fellowship experience included Victor Bailey, Kristine Latta, Sally Utech, Cindy Lynn, Jeanie Wuhlfkuhle, Dave Tell, Jill Kuhnheim, Randy Klein, Samantha Bishop Simmons, Kathy Porsch, and Stephanie Johnson. I am also grateful to the Department of History at the University of Kansas, which, prior to this fellowship, provided me with five years of gainful employment and tuition waivers as a graduate teaching assistant or graduate assistant instructor. The faculty and staff of the department also awarded me smaller research scholarships and immeasurable professional support throughout my years of study. I also wish to thank Dennis Domer, who acquired additional funding for this project through a Boomer Futures Student Fellowship. This funding added to my research coffers, but vi more importantly, it brought me into contact with an active community of gerontologists, scholars from other fields, and persons outside the university who are all working on research and application in the field of aging and the built environment. Among these people who have provided intellectual guidance, support, and the occasional challenge to my assertions, are Cheryl Lester, Dave Ekerdt, and Erin Smith. Similarly, my colleagues in a dissertation reading group provided feedback on each chapter of this work. Tom Arnold, Jeremy Prichard, Chris Rein, James Quinn, Margarita Karnysheva, and Dustin Gann all spent innumerable hours reading and commenting on my work, as well as commiserating with one another over our cups of coffee. I am happy to say that several of these individuals have also successfully defended their dissertations and are moving on to new phases of their lives. Perhaps friendship is the best place to end these acknowledgements, as I consider all of the people mentioned here to be, above all, my friends. vii Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Public Support for Entitlement Policies ...................................................................................... 6 Chapter One – Challenging Disengagement and Poverty: A More Youthful Old Age ................ 15 Senior Poverty and Age Stratification by Mid-Century ............................................................ 16 Explanatory Models: Disengagement and Activity Theories .................................................... 19 Countering Senior Poverty: Medicare ...................................................................................... 21 An Emergent Model: Leisurely Retirement ............................................................................... 29 Reorienting Old Age in the 1960s-1970s .................................................................................. 37 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 50 Chapter Two – Benefits Won: The Senior Movement and the Coalescence