Age and dependency: children and the aged in American social policy.

Abstract

major trend reversals in most social welfare programs; legal services for the poor, housing finance, health care for the poor, school lunches, student aid, food and nutrition programs, to name a few, were particularly targeted. Notably absent from the list in the beginning were programs for the aging, especially Social Security and veterans programs. Only as the economic situation tightened this past year did the Reagan administration begin to touch the social insurance system, and even then it proceeded with much caution. How did the special public concern for the aging come about and how pervasive has it been as a matter of public policy? The politically privileged position of the elderly is marked both by change and continuity. On the one hand, aged, native white men had secured substantial benefits from the Civil War pensions through the late nineteenth century. But the pensions did not cover most women or nonwhites. And when the Civil War veterans and their dependents died the extended coverage lapsed so that by 1920, there was virtually no coverage. By the time of the development of the Social Security insurance system in 1935, the aging were one of the poorest groups in American society. Thus, it is only in the relatively recent past that