Cultural Diversity and Aging: Ethnicity, Minorities, and Subcultures

• Main Authors: Dillworth‐Anderson, Peggye, Boswell, Gracie
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2007
• Subjects: Pacific; eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc173; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2F9781405165518.wbeosc173; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc173

Current US Census population projections (2004) clearly show a growing number of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups in American society. Parallel to this increase in diversity, the number of older adults in America is increasing. Older adult members of society are increasing at a faster rate than any other subgroup in America, and among this aging population, the percentage of the population who are members of minority groups will grow, between 2000 and 2050, at an even faster rate than the white majority. In 2002 (US Census 2002), the older population numbered 35.6 million; this was an increase of 3.3 million or 10.2 percent since 1992. Minority populations are projected to represent 26.4 percent of the elderly population in 2030, up from 17.2 percent in 2002. Between 2000 and 2030, the white population 65 and older is projected to increase by 77 percent compared with 223 percent for older minorities, including Hispanics (342 percent), African Americans (164 percent), American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts (207 percent), and Asians and Pacific Islanders (302 percent). Accompanying this tremendous boom in population growth and ethnic makeup will be economic problems as well as promises of diversity. These economic problems and promises will be directly associated with living arrangements and health‐care needs of increasingly frail members of the population as well as the satisfaction of the supply and demand requirements for diversified goods and services of a vibrantly aging population (Angel & Hogan 2004).