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.

Publisher Description

This book explores a dramatic change in French attitudes toward aging and the aged in the eighteenth century from one extreme of ridicule and neglect to another of respect and care.