Ageist stereotypes justify pension costs while ignoring elderly people’s actual productivity

Evidence

The need to fund the pensions and health costs of America’s aging population are used as economic justifications for increasing the size of the population. These justifications, and the media portrayals they spawn, are infused with pejorative stereotypes of the elderly as idle simpletons leading barren lives, draining precious societal resources but having little to contribute to the life of society (Signorielli, 1985). The people of today are aging more successfully than did those of earlier eras (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Bandura, 1997; Rowe & Kahn, 1998). They are healthier, more knowledgeable, more intellectually agile, and able to work productively for longer. In the current realities of late adulthood, life is characterized more by a shift in pursuits and personal renewal than by withdrawal from an active life (Bandura, 1997; Carstensen, 2011). But societal structures and practices lag behind the capabilities of the elderly, so their skills and knowledge are largely untapped (Riley, Kahn, & Foner, 1994). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2631

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the author’s own article ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ on how stereotypes get political work done through moralizing.