The Plight Of Older Black Women in the United States

Abstract

situation of aging black women is physiologically, psychologically and socioculturally heterogeneous, but how do black women really fare as they age? Race and age are causally related, but how? Unfortunately, definitive responses to each of these two important inquiries are severely limited by the current paucity of gerontological and related knowledge, as well as by methodological sophistication, including the unresolved difficulty of disaggregating race reliably from relevant sets of intertwining and highly complex variables. The search for such responses should be escalated now for many different reasons, with one important reason being the fact that the total black female population is aging. Its median age in years of 23.7 in 1970, and 24.3 in 1974, may be 26.6 in 1984, and 28.8 in 1994. The proportion 45 or more years of age (about 25%), as well as the proportion 65 or more years of age (about 8%) is expected to remain relatively constant throughout this century, as is the proportion 75 or more years of age (about 35%) within the elderly population. But substantial numerical in-