Aging Public Policy: Bonding the Generations (Society and Aging Series) - Hardcover

"Aging Public Policy: Bonding the Generations fills a big hole in the literature. Political scientists, gerontologists, and other advanced students of Federal policymaking have a wide array of scholarly books at their disposal; from them, one can get a sense of the complexities and contradictions and challenges that inhere in shaping, implementing, and evaluating programs for the elderly and other age groups in this aging society. Paradoxically, however, there is so much technical, discipline-specific information available, that most students become overwhelmed. The principal virtue of Aging Public Policy is that it was written by two able teachers and communicators for classroom use. Lucid, balanced, and insightful, this volume will serve many as a helpful introduction to a growing literature on an important topic." -- W. Andrew Achenbaum, Ph.D., Deputy Director of the Institute of Gerontology and Professor of History at the University of Michigan

"This book is the best text on public policy and aging to come along in a very long time. Well-organized and written, it should become an excellent text for both undergraduate and graduate students, but also, I predict it will be used widely as a reference by public policymakers and their staffs at the national and state levels and for those who are regularly involved in the hurly-burly of the legislative process.

As a former professor, I was impressed that the book is a coherent and rational effort to describe and discuss the formation of public policy in the USA over much of this century. This, in itself, is no easy task, but the authors do a fine job of linking the development of public policy with the programs that we find today serving older people in many areas such as income, health, social services, housing and employment.

The four chapters of the book that discuss Social Security, health care, employment and retirement, and housing and social services are alone worth the price of the book. The Social Security chapter is scholarly and contains a rich discussion of the evolution of the Social Security Act from 1935 to the present. The health chapter has a rich sense of history. Its discussion of the origins of Medicare and Medicaid and the role played by such advocates of national health insurance as Wilbur Cohen and Nelson Cruikshank in getting Medicare enacted is long overdue in a public policy text on aging. The employment and retirement chapter includes some in-depth discussions of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the critical area of private pension funding. The chapter on housing and social services is of equal quality. Again, this is a fine book. It truly will be a major contribution to the growing literature on public policy and aging that has begun to emerge in the last decade or so." (William D. Bechill, former U.S. Commissioner on Aging and Executive Vice-Chair of Save our Social Security Coalition - SOS)

"Ted Koff has produced a most useful companion on aging issues that combines indispensable history with current policy dilemmas and a road map through the increasingly complex aging network. It is a most valuable resource for students as well as practitioners in the field of aging who want to understand the development of aging programs and their relationship to historical trends and the work of advisory and advocacy groups." Dr. Daniel Thursz, President of the National Council on the Aging, Inc. -- (Dr. Daniel Thursz, President of the National Council on the Aging, Inc.)