America's Ethnogeriatric Imperative
Demographers, teachers, and reporters have made the vision of the bulge in the population pyramid that is approaching the age of Social Security and Medicare benefits familiar to the American public and the public health community. Its predicted influence on health care is frequently referred to as “the geriatric imperative.” Not so familiar, however, is the recognition that this bulge of older Americans represents an increasingly diverse population—diverse in many ways, but especially in their ethnic background, so that, in reality, the imperative is an ethnogeriatric one.
The ethnic population categories for which data are available are those used by the census and other federal agencies, designated as the “ethnic minority” populations. The projected growth of the number of elders from those categories from 2000 to 2050 is included in Table 1 . The categories considered “races” by the US Census are American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Pacific...
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Acknowledgment
This work was partially supported by a grant from the Bureau of Health Professions, Health Resources and Services Administration, for a Geriatric Education Center.
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Yeo, G. (2008). Cultural Diversity among Elders in the US: Meeting the Challenge of the Ethnogeriatric Imperative. In: Loue, S.J., Sajatovic, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-33754-8_458
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