Gray Agendas

Book excerpt: Gray Agendas presents a groundbreaking, cross-national study into the complex and interdependent relationship between public policy and the interest groups of the aged. Canada, Britain, and the United States are examined and compared. This book provides a unique, in-depth understanding of how public policies have sparked the creation of organized senior citizen groups, which in turn, through their intensified political clout, have been able to shape subsequent public policy. The book begins with a historical perspective on the state's role in the lives of the aged and the indirect consequences of various policies on the elderly population, including most specifically, age group mobilization. Later, consideration is given to widespread economic, social, and ideological changes in age policy, and the effect that new interest group formation had and continues to have upon these changes. The final chapters are concerned with current issues surrounding the present density of organized age based activity, and the effects of transformed state policy on the future of interest groups for the aged. The unique topic of Gray Agendas will prove interesting not only to those interested in the fields of sociology, history, and political science, but also will help fill the gap of scholarly information on issues concerning the elderly's organizations, proving invaluable to those interested in social gerontology and related areas of study.