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When Old Age Changed: Inventing The "Senior State," 1945-1975, Benjamin Hellwege

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation asks why public assistance at the federal level in the United States has become significantly oriented towards the needs of older Americans since the New Deal era. It argues that in effect the United States has developed an old age welfare state – a “senior state,” in other words, which has sought primarily to protect the economic status of older Americans, and that the creation of this “senior state” represents the end-point of a long-term project by social reformers, organized labor, and old age advocacy organizations over the course of the second half of the 20th century to …