In his groundbreaking 1980 account of baby boomers, “Great Expectations,” Landon Y. Jones predicted that this generation would pioneer a new model for old age. The cohort born between 1946 and 1964 “promises to be relatively healthier, better educated, and more secure in their desires,” Jones writes. “For baby boomers, being old may one day offer all the possibilities of youth.”

A day has arrived. And Jones turns out to have been prescient about this generation’s eternally youthful proclivities. But he may have been too optimistic about the U.S. government’s ability or willingness to meet the growing needs of baby boomers. James Chappel’s useful new social and cultural study, “The Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age,” places this gap in historical context.

Chappel, an associate professor of history at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center, wears his scholarship lightly. Writing in clear, accessible prose, he surveys a century of evolving understandings and experiences of aging in America. From a progressive perspective, it also examines some paths not taken, including the failure to create a more generous social safety net, pay more attention to disabled and minority populations, and account for the effects of change climatic.

In his introduction, Chappel cites the long-term care crisis, the rising cost of health care and the lack of labor protections for caregivers as major challenges. He notes that the seniors movement “has always been based primarily on the needs of one class of people: white, married, middle-class couples.” It’s true, he writes, that “older Americans report a higher sense of subjective well-being than younger Americans.” Nevertheless, older women living alone are “particularly prone to poverty and isolation”, and people of color “have had limited access to social security, private pensions and various other mechanisms than the white middle classes used to finance their dignified retirements.

Chappel’s chronological account is divided into three main sections, each linked to a different conception of old age. In the first part, “The Elderly (1900-1940)”, he explores the first retirement movements and the creation of social security in 1935. Despite all its shortcomings, some lessened over time, Chappel considers social security as “modestly progressive” and “our most important poverty reduction program.”

Later in the book, he cites criticism of the program, which is not only regressively funded but, arguably, “an ineffective mix of social insurance and welfare.” Social Security, Chappel notes, enshrines economic inequality by basing payments on past wages, which are correlated with race and gender. He gives money even to those who don’t need it, and is relatively miserly towards those who do. Yet its very survival seems linked to its status as a universal benefit, which guarantees a broad base of political support.

Part two, “Older Citizens (1940-1975),” covers the passage of Medicare legislation in 1965—like Social Security, “moderate and compromised legislation” that emerged after more radical alternatives failed. Chappel also discusses what he calls “the invention of retirement,” which gave rise to retirement communities, senior centers, and nursing homes.

In a chapter devoted to gerontology and black activism, he pays tribute to Jacquelyne Jackson, a Duke University sociologist who fought unsuccessfully to give blacks earlier access to Social Security benefits.

In part three, “The Elderly (1975-2000),” Chappel discusses the rise of the AARP, with an emphasis on the fight against ageism; the role of the television series “The Golden Girls” from 1985 to 1992 in highlighting health and sexuality; the shift from pensions to riskier defined contribution programs; and the development of “assisted living”, at home and in institutions.

One of the strengths of “Golden Years” is its broad scope. But that broad brush means Chappel doesn’t always dive deep. In the case of Social Security, for example, he never addresses the burden the program places on self-employed workers, who, regardless of their income level, pay double the taxes of employees. He mentions that Medicare has become more complicated. But it underestimates the labyrinthine complexities posed by competing and confusing Medigap and Medicare Advantage plans, each with different costs, practitioners and benefits designed to fill the gaps left by original Medicare.

As the media focuses increasing attention on the long-term care crisis, the perennial funding problems of Social Security and Medicare, and the scarcity of retirement savings, much of the ground covered by Chappel is not new. What is telling is his account of Black activism on these issues and the various efforts made over the decades to push the system toward greater equity.

Old-age pensions would have been very different, for example, if the federal government had taken up the cause of the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Assn., which sought payments for former slaves. Or the Townsend plan, which called for a sales tax to fund large pensions for everyone, regardless of prior income.

In his conclusion, Chappel weighs the United States’ undeniable successes and failures in providing security for its aging population. Longer lifespans, desirable as they are, have also led to greater physical and mental decrepitude, including dementia – a major theme in today’s popular culture and an almost intolerable burden on families, most often women.

Chappel deplores the government’s apparent lack of will to tackle the problem. While Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has proposed a federally funded long-term care benefit, the idea likely died with her candidacy — at least for now.

For Chappel, the problem is even more fundamental. “American political culture,” he insists, “has lost its capacity to have meaningful conversations about old age. » Perhaps it is time for baby boomers, with their numbers and considerable personal interest, to bring the subject to light.

Julia M. Klein is a journalist and cultural critic in Philadelphia.