Relationships of Legally Responsible Children Toward Their Parents Receiving Old Age Assistance: A Study of Fifty Old Age Assistance Cases in 1950 at the Amsterdam Welfare Center, Department of Welfare, New York City
Abstract
The rapid and progressive trend of the twentieth century toward industrialization of our economy brought to the fore many social, economic and cultural changes affecting the status of the aged in our population. One consequence of our increased productivity has been a shift in the proportions of the population securing income from agricultural to industrial employment. This social change has had far-reaching effects upon the security of the aged, both from an economic and social viewpoint. The decline of agriculture as the typical method of earning a living has reacted with particular severity upon the security of older people. Where the unit of production was the family, an older person was able to make some contribution to the economic welfare of the family as a whole and was neither wholly unwelcome nor wholly idle. Today, when wage earning is the typical source of normal family security, the situation is different. The older person cannot fit so easily into the economic system and often becomes a definite liability to the earning family. As a concomitant of our industrial expansion, people flocked to the cities and urban areas which were the centers of employment. This mobility of the population was markedly more progressive since 1935. The shift in the population n was further heightened during the war years between 1940 and 1945 due to the requirements of the war effort. It was estimated that about 15 million civilians were living in a different county from that in which they resided at the beginning of World War II.
Subject Area
Health care management|Social work|Aging
Recommended Citation
Sivin, Louis, "Relationships of Legally Responsible Children Toward Their Parents Receiving Old Age Assistance: A Study of Fifty Old Age Assistance Cases in 1950 at the Amsterdam Welfare Center, Department of Welfare, New York City" (1952). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30557656.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30557656
