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279 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1952)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0279 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction: A Philosophy of Aging By CLARK TIBBITTs and HENRY D. SHELDON T HIS volume has a purpose. The purpose is to present an inventory of the characteristics of aging people, to assess their potentialities for fur- ther integration in community life, and to examine the conditions essential to maintaining such integration. The title of the volume is Social Contribution by the Aging. The un- derlying philosophy of all the contribu- tors is (a) that there are positive roles for aging and aged people through which they can make valuable contri- butions to American society and (b) that these roles offer opportunity for continuing, if not increased, individual satisfaction in the later years. A corol- lary of this point of view is that assign- ment of active roles to our older citi- zens will resolve many of the individ- ual, family, and community problems that have arisen out of the growing number and proportion of older people. OUR AGING POPULATION The presentation of statistics on the aging population poses something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it is in- sisted, with a good deal of justification, that there is no single chronological age above which the population may be regarded as elderly; on the other hand, the specification of such a lower limit is a necessary condition for statistical analysis. This situation is met in part, at least, by the presentation of figures for several age levels. Preliminary sample data from the 1950 Census indicate that approxi- mately 12 million persons, or about 8 per cent of the total population, were 65 years old and over. The correspond- ing figures for persons 60 and over were about 18 million, or 12 per cent; for persons 55 and over, 25.5 million, or 17 per cent; and for persons 50 and over, 34 million, or 23 per cent of the total population. The older population, defined in terms of any of these various levels, is not evenly distributed among all segments of the population. There were, for example, relatively more el- derly persons among whites than among nonwhites in 1950. Thus, persons 55 years old and over constituted about 17.5 per cent of the total white popula- tion but only 11.5 per cent of the non- white population; and for persons 65 and over, the corresponding figures were 8.5 per cent and 5.7 per cent respec- tively. The difference in age between whites and nonwhites is reflected in the figures on the geographic distribution of the aging population. In the Northeast, the North Central States, and the West the proportions of persons 55 and over, and 65 and over closely approached the national percentages for these age groups. In the South, where about one-fifth of the population is nonwhite, these proportions were somewhat lower. It was not, however, purely a matter of color. The proportions of persons 55 and over, and 65 and over in the white population of the South were 14.5 per cent and 7.0 per cent respectively, as compared with 17.5 per cent and 8.5 per cent for the total white population. Variations in the relative number of elderly persons among the states were somewhat greater than among regions. In states such as Iowa and New Hamp- shire more than 10 per cent of the 1

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