Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age

Front Cover
David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett
Univ of California Press, May 4, 2018 - Social Science - 424 pages
Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging.

Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged.

Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles Wetherell

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.
 

Contents

Age and Aging in the Societies of the Past
3
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS
71
La Famille Souche
107
Household Systems and the Lives of the Old in Eighteenth
129
Migration in the Later Years of Life in Traditional Europe
156
The Residential Patterns of
175
Aging and Home Ownership in
203
Kertzer and Nancy Karweit
229
Daniel Scott Smith
249
PART IV RETIREMENT AND MORTALITY
303
CONCLUSION
331
Toward a Historical Demography of Aging
363
INDEX
385
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2018)

David I. Kertzer is Dupee University Professor of Social Science and Professor of Anthropology and History at Brown University and the author of several books, including Sacrificed for HonorPeter Laslett is a Fellow at Trinity College and cofounder of The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

Bibliographic information