The Measure of Our Age by M.T. Connolly

Author:M.T. Connolly [Connolly, M.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

Ageism also combines with and accentuates other forms of bias, like prejudice against people with disabilities, also called ableism. Seven in ten people age eighty and older have at least one disability.14 The interplay of ageism and ableism isn’t well understood, but they appear to magnify each other’s impact with devastating ramifications.

Older women suffer the double whammy of ageism and sexism. Not only are they considered to become less beautiful and desirable as they age, they also become invisible.

And nursing homes reveal how ageism combines with racism and socioeconomic disparities that accumulate over a lifetime. Research has long shown that on average older African Americans live in worse nursing homes than their white counterparts. COVID-19 multiplied those inequities with much higher death counts in majority minority facilities.

Ageism also compounds economic inequities. For one thing, disparate opportunities for accumulating retirement savings means many older Americans are economically unprepared for old age. People in lower income brackets “get poorer by the year.”15 The National Council on Aging reports that one in three, or fifteen million, older Americans live at or below the federal poverty level. Even more older people of color and women live in poverty given historic wage discrimination and other inequities. Many can’t afford to stop working.

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