This groundbreaking book provides comprehensive treatment of the political economy of aging by a scholar widely credited as the founder and key thinker of this field in the US and internationally. The body of work presented in this volume, in developing this critical perspective, aims to contribute to the understanding of old age and aging in the context of problems and issues of the larger social order in the world's most advanced capitalist nation, the U.S.A. Since Estes' first writing on the political economy of aging in 1979, there has been growing recognition and incorporation of her critical perspective as one of the major paradigms in the field of aging.