Differences in life expectancy due to race and educational differences are widening, and many may not catch up.

It has long been known that despite well-documented improvements in longevity for most Americans, alarming disparities persist among racial groups and between the well-educated and those with less education. In this article we update estimates of the impact of race and education on past and present life expectancy, examine trends in disparities from 1990 through 2008, and place observed disparities in the context of a rapidly aging society that is emerging at a time of optimism about the next revolution in longevity. We found that in 2008 US adult men and women with fewer than twelve years of education had life expectancies not much better than those of all adults in the 1950s and 1960s.

Older voters and the 2010 U.S. election: implications for 2012 and beyond?

Purpose: To analyze the extent to which Americans aged 65 and older may have voted as an old age-benefits bloc in the 2010 midterm election in response to threats of Medicare rationing.

Methods: Analysis of age group data from the Edison Research 2010 Election Day exit polls, complemented by data published elsewhere.

Results: For the first time in 4 decades, there were signs of an old-age voting bloc in the 2010 election; yet, analysis of the age group data by sex and race/ethnicity reveals notable differences among these subgroups.

From compassionate ageism to intergenerational conflict?

During the 50 years in which The Gerontologist has been publishing, the politics of aging in the United States has undergone distinct changes. The political behavior of older individuals has remained largely the same even though different birth cohorts have succeeded each other in populating the ranks of older people. But the politics of policies on aging-the organized interest and advocacy groups active in this arena, the tenor of public discourse about older people as beneficiaries of policies on aging, the national political agendas regarding public old-age benefits, and the broader U.

Older voters and the 2008 election.

Purpose: In the 2008 presidential election, a majority of older persons voted for John McCain, the loser. The purposes of this report are to help illuminate why older voters were the only age-group that gave a majority to McCain and to delineate some ongoing issues in the analysis of older persons' voting behavior.

Methods: Analysis was undertaken by mining raw data from the 2008 Edison-Mitofsky national Election Day exit poll, as well as compilations from that poll that were published by various media that finance it.

Anti-aging science: The emergence, maintenance, and enhancement of a discipline.

Through archival analysis this article traces the emergence, maintenance, and enhancement of biogerontology as a scientific discipline in the United States. At first, biogerontologists' attempts to control human aging were regarded as a questionable pursuit due to: perceptions that their efforts were associated with the long history of charlatanic, anti-aging medical practices; the idea that anti-aging is a "forbidden science" ethically and scientifically; and the perception that the field was scientifically bereft of rigor and scientific innovation. The hard-fought establishment of the National Institute on Aging, scientific advancements in genetics and biotechnology, and consistent "boundary work" by scientists, have allowed biogerontology to flourish and gain substantial legitimacy with other scientists and funding agencies, and in the public imagination.

Our aging societies: ethical, moral, and policy challenges.

The aging of industrialized nations poses grave ethical, moral, and policy challenges for health professionals and our societies. The demand for both acute and long-term health care for the elderly will increasingly strain the economic resources of older persons and our nations. These pressures generate a number of difficult issues for our aging societies.

Older voters and the 2004 election.

For several decades, candidates in U.S. presidential election campaigns have articulated policy issues designed to appeal to older Americans.

Anti-aging medicine and research: a realm of conflict and profound societal implications.

Biogerontologists have recently launched a war of words on anti-aging medicine. They seek to discredit what they judge to be fraudulent and harmful products and therapies, and to distinguish their own research from what they regard as the pseudoscience of anti-aging injections, special mineral waters, and other services and products. Yet, many of these biogerontologists are themselves trying to develop interventions that will actually slow or arrest the fundamental processes of human aging and substantially extend average life expectancy and maximum life span.

Anti-aging medicine: can consumers be better protected?

The use of interventions claiming to prevent, retard, or reverse aging is proliferating. Some of these interventions can seriously harm older persons and aging baby boomers who consume them. Others that are merely ineffective may divert patients from participating in beneficial regimens and also cause them economic harm.

The war on "anti-aging medicine".

Leading members of the gerontological community have recently launched a war on anti-aging medicine, seeking to discredit what they judge to be fraudulent and harmful products and therapies, and to distinguish their research from what they regard as the pseudoscience of the anti-aging movement. This article interprets the contemporary war on anti-aging medicine as largely an attempt by established gerontological researchers to preserve their hard-won scientific and political legitimacy, as well as to maintain and enhance funding for research on the basic biological mechanisms of aging. First, it recounts the difficult struggle of U.