Abstract
It should not be a surprise to any sociologist that the American population is aging. Many studies have shed light on the society-wide ramifications of the graying of the baby-boomers and their inevitable exit from the labor market and into retirement: the eventual insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, increased demand for long-term health care management, and a new market for products promising to keep aging Americans healthy, wealthy, and fit. However, state variations in climate, access to health care, affordable housing, and crime virtually ensure that individual experiences with growing old will depend on geographic context. To address this issue, in Aging Across the United States: Matching Needs to States’ Differing Opportunities and Services, Charles Lockhart and Jean Giles-Sims present an accessible survey of state-level differences on a variety of topics that matter to aging Americans.
There are two disparate target audiences for this book—social scientists and people approaching retirement—and the authors should be commended for how they balanced the technical aspects of the research with the clarity of information that can help older people make decisions in their own lives. The authors provide easily digestible statistical summaries of geographic variation on topics that seniors often report as influential on their decision to move for retirement: active living in a warm climate, having a supportive community, obtaining affordable and safe housing, and having access to high-quality short and long term health care. The chapters are arranged more or less in that order. Buttressing the quantitative “macro-level” exposé on state or regional characteristics in each chapter, are personal accounts of people’s lived experiences. While these qualitative stories ostensibly add humanity to the data, they also provide real-world examples from which readers can learn. Researchers will appreciate that the authors warn against committing ecological fallacy by conflating the individual accounts with the state-level data (p. 32).
Throughout the book, the authors present many choropleths (data maps of the United States) illustrating how each state ranks in comparison on different variables. This is a clear way to show the data, and general readers and researchers alike will find them useful. Another nice data feature is available as an appendix (pp. 147–186) of 40 rank-ordered tables of the data corresponding to the maps. These great research resources are a strength of the book.
The study has a couple of limitations that are worth keeping in mind. First, a non-trivial contingent of the older population chooses to “age in place” either because of necessity or personal preferences. This choice, however, is unrepresented in both the discussion of options for retirement and in the personal anecdotes highlighted in the manuscript. Also, in Chapter Two (Making Meaningful Contributions and Finding Supportive Communities), the authors equate greater economic equality and political egalitarianism with improved access to opportunities for civic engagement. This perspective begs the question of whether the large number of seniors living in relatively class-homogeneous retirement communities find meaningful civic engagement activities. Even though not explicitly discussed, readers who are interested in these issues can gloss information from the chapters about their own states and possibly reassess their options. In addition to that limitation, the authors’ attempt at synthesis in the conclusion chapter is a bit weak. Here, they rely on regression analysis of a multidimensional variable they call state senior friendliness (SSF). They construct five measures of the key dimensions of senior living that demarcate the major themes of this book but do not create a single omnibus measure. Some older people may want an answer to the question of where is the optimal place to live in retirement. Lockhart and Giles-Sims’ response is that it depends on what you want out of life—and, if possible, move more than once as priorities shift from, say, living an active lifestyle to obtaining high-quality long-term care. The synthesizing conclusion offers little response to such inquiries but is still helpful for a general assessment of which states are the most senior friendly on the most dimensions of retirement planning; the reader is left to do the leg work in this regard.
These are only minor limitations and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this well-written manuscript. I recommend this book to exactly the audience that the authors are trying reach: researchers studying aging, like myself, and older people and their families more generally. In fact, I sent my grandparents a copy of this book. Years ago they moved from New England to the Sunbelt early in their retirement. Now they face making living decisions based on changes in their health. They will learn a great deal about their options from this book, as I did.