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With the publication of A Fresh Map of Life, Peter Laslett (1996) introduced the concept of the Third Age to a wide audience consisting of academics as well as lay people. With it, he pointed to an important change in modern societies brought on by the spectacular increase in longevity and in the accompanying increase in disability-free longevity that occurred during the twentieth century. Laslett used the Third Age to describe a newly emerging phase of life, in which productive activities largely cease or at least change, but in which the majority of people remain healthy and active in many ways. In this volume, the Third Age is defined as consisting of the period between age 65 and 79, with the Fourth Age, characterized by increasing levels of dependence, beginning at age 80. Some individuals have always lived healthy and active lives well beyond the age of 65, but within the last 50 years, a rapid increase has occurred in the likelihood of reaching and living through the Third Age. It was this development that caught the interest of Peter Laslett and many others. From the latter part of the twentieth century, the rich developed countries became societies with a substantial proportion of their population being in the Third Age. The dominance of this group of adults varies somewhat from country to country, depending largely on the level of fertility and immigration, but it is safe to say that at the beginning of the new millennium, a large part of the population in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries were in the Third Age.
The goal of this chapter is to provide a description of the Third Age population in the United States. Two broad questions will be addressed: 1) when and to what extent can the United States be said to be a Third Age society; and 2) who are the people in the Third Age, how and with whom do they live, what are their financial circumstances and what do they do, and how healthy are they? Analyses will be based on national vital statistics and census data. The focus for the first question will be on the period between 1950 and 2000, and for the second question, on the...