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Aging into the 21st Century
Preface
This report discusses issues related to the size and characteristics
of the future elderly population in this country. This report
uses the most current U.S. Bureau of the Census population, marital
status, and household projections, as well as other current statistics
to provide an informative context for evaluating the implications
of the growth of our older population. In conjunction with data
on the labor force, income, education, and living arrangements,
especially living alone, the projections and statistics help shed
light on the future makeup of our aging population.
Rather than creating a new set of projections (which was not
feasible for this project), or adopting a single set of projections
previously made by others, we selected individual series of projections
relating to the elderly from a variety of sources, redesigned
them, and assembled them into the tables in this report. Since
the data are drawn from different sources, however, the base dates
of the projections and the terminal dates may differ, and the
assumptions upon which the projections are based may not be consistent.
In some cases, data on the same or overlapping areas from different
sources are presented to provide additional detail or suggest
the range of uncertainty. The data are generally as current as
or more current than those available in other publications. We
consulted a wide variety of persons involved in the preparation
of demographic data and in some instances obtained access to information
prior to its publication. After examination of this document and
of the sources listed, the reader should have a clear impression
as to how the "look" of the elderly will change in the
next several decades. The report presents currently available
national data in tabular form. Data for subnational areas will
be considered in a future report. The time span varies from 5
to 55 years, depending on the topic and the availability of data.
We wish to thank several persons in the Federal Government who
provided documents, data, and information that aided greatly in
the completion of this report. They are Gregory Spencer, Kevin
Deardorff, and Nancy White of the U.S. Bureau of the Census; Felicitie
Bell of the Actuary's Office of the Social Security Administration;
Howard Fullerton of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; Joan Van Nostrand
of the National Center for Health Statistics; Douglas Fox of the
Bureau of Economic Analysis; and Kathleen A. Sorensen of the National
Center of Veteran Analysis and Statistics. We also wish to thank
Lisa Maria B. Alecxih of Lewin/ICF for providing the set of unpublished
projections relating to the elderly prepared by her company.
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