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Summary
Summary
One of Time 's 100 most influential people "shines a new light on the need for a holistic approach to caregiving in America . . . Timely and hopeful" (Maria Shriver).
In The Age of Dignity , thought leader and activist Ai-jen Poo offers a wake-up call about the statistical reality that will affect us all: Fourteen percent of our population is now over sixty-five; by 2030 that ratio will be one in five. In fact, our fastest-growing demographic is the eighty-five-plus age group--over five million people now, a number that is expected to more than double in the next twenty years. This change presents us with a new challenge: how we care for and support quality of life for the unprecedented numbers of older Americans who will need it.
Despite these daunting numbers, Poo has written a profoundly hopeful book, giving us a glimpse into the stories and often hidden experiences of the people--family caregivers, older people, and home care workers--whose lives will be directly shaped and reshaped in this moment of demographic change. The Age of Dignity outlines a road map for how we can become a more caring nation, providing solutions for fixing our fraying safety net while also increasing opportunities for women, immigrants, and the unemployed in our workforce. As Poo has said, "Care is the strategy and the solution toward a better future for all of us."
"Every American should read this slender book. With luck, it will be the future for all of us." --Gloria Steinem
"Positive and inclusive." -- The New York Times
"A big-hearted book [that] seeks to transform our dismal view of aging and caregiving." -- Ms. magazine
Author Notes
Ai-jen Poo is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and a co-director of the Caring Across Generations Campaign. In 2000, she co-founded Domestic Workers United. She lives in New York City.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and recent winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, offers a critical examination of the current and near-future situation of the elderly and home care workers in the U.S., along with hopeful suggestions for improvement. In the first portion of this work, Poo combines statistics with the stories of individuals to give a multifaceted picture of the difficulties facing older Americans, their families, and their caregivers. With the population of Americans over the age of 85 now representing the country's most rapidly growing demographic, she predicts that the demand for care workers and the challenges to our current "care labyrinth" will only increase. The book goes on to indict the U.S. medical system and government assistance programs for emphasizing the "delay of death, rather than the quality of life." Meanwhile, elders' family members, generally too busy to provide adequate care themselves, relegate the task to in-home care workers, many of them undocumented immigrants, who receive poor wages and virtually no benefits. For possible solutions, Poo looks abroad to programs like the "time dollar" currency credit of Japan, as well as to domestic programs like Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Overall, she makes a strong argument for a cultural and governmental shift toward valuing older citizens and providing them with opportunities for rich, full lives. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A fierce advocate for the rights of domestic workers examines two phenomenaa booming aging population in need of long-term care and the rising tide of undocumented immigrantsand finds not two problems but one great opportunity.National Domestic Workers Alliance director Poo is surprisingly optimistic in the face of what would seem to be tough problems for American society. With reams of statistics, she presents the facts about the coming increase in our aging population, and she points out that we can learn from other countries, namely Japan and Germany, that have already faced this situation and have been finding ways to cope with it. We can become a more caring nation by making certain cultural, behavioral and structural changes in our society, and Poo offers some specific models of change to build on. Some are technological developments; some are community-based projects; some are government programs currently being tested in a number of states. The author argues that just as the nation has built an infrastructure of roads and electricity, so can it build an infrastructure of care. The caregivers that the elderly must frequently most rely on are immigrants, "the invisible infrastructure" of our economy and our social fabric. Poo claims that we must create a way for undocumented caregivers to attain legal status, provide the training needed to raise the quality of care and improve their wages. She even outlines how the money could be raised to accomplish these goals. Her narrative is filled with stories of the lives and struggles of individual caregivers for the elderly that she has interviewed, and she provides photographs of her grandmother and other elderly women with their devoted caregivers. Three appendices provide further information on resources. This can-do book by an activist seeking to rouse the public into action has a lot to say to anyone who plans on getting old. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
FOR YEARS, NONFICTION books about aging have tended to fall into certain categories: pragmatic texts about coping with specific challenges and encouraging healthy aging; memoirs of the author's experience of old age or of caring for elderly parents; research-filled narratives by experts or journalists. The latest addition to the field, Ai-jen Poo's "The Age of Dignity," falls into yet another category: books that propose new approaches to the way our society deals with old age. As a leader of the first successful effort to pass a state domestic workers' bill of rights, as director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and as a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient, Poo has a pedigree worthy of her ambition. Collaborating with the writer Ariane Conrad, Poo mixes facts about aging and the caregiving work force with stories from her own family and from various domestic workers, backing them up with seminal writings on the topic to argue that the best solution to the challenges posed by our rapidly aging population is a comprehensive state and federal policy supporting care of the elderly at home. Such care costs far less than nursing homes and is preferred by an overwhelming majority of older Americans. With changes to compensation and training for professional caregivers, the system Poo calls the Care Grid would also decrease the burden on adult children of the elderly, create safer and more sustainable jobs for unemployed or underemployed Americans and expand the home-care work force to meet the growing demand. Poo's positive and inclusive approach is particularly appealing. For her, the elder boom is an opportunity not only to improve the lives of the old but to create an infrastructure that benefits people of all ages, backgrounds and classes. While different groups would gain in different ways, she makes well-argued cases for financial, personal and professional opportunities for everyone from middle-class families to entrepreneurs and undocumented laborers. Poo advocates more equitable treatment of minorities, women, immigrants and the poor, as well as a national solution to aging that engages public, private and nonprofit resources and supports a "powerful intergenerational alignment" she calls a "Caring Majority." Unfortunately, the book's structure and style at times undermine its intent. Poo's language is often conversational and sometimes sounds like a spiritual self-help book - even in passages where straightforward reporting might better serve her purpose. She speaks of "beautiful opportunities to connect and care" and "beautiful impacts of more grandparental involvement in raising younger generations." This sort of phrasing can lessen the impact of important points, as when she notes that greater employer support for child care than elder care is "pretty astounding, given that everyone has parents and grandparents, but not everyone has children." "The Age of Dignity" opens and closes with short reflections that are more personal, vague and utopian than the meat of the book, which is divided into a longer section detailing current conditions for older adults, family caregivers and homecare workers and a second section that proposes a framework for cultural, behavioral and policy-based change - Poo's Care Grid strategy. Appendices provide information on government programs and resources for families. Poo's vision for the future is presented in fragments, its elements stretched across two chapters and interrupted by subsections with more anecdotes and data. But while she makes a convincing case for reforms - including higher wages, better training and oversight for home-care workers, and the bolstering of Social Security and Medicare through small increases in taxation - it's not entirely evident how her "bold, cleareyed restructuring of our priorities and budgets" will be achieved. As a result, the reader is left with a sense that the steps necessary to implement her plan might have been more coherently and convincingly articulated. There are occasional flaws in Poo's reasoning as well. In making her case for infrastructural transformation, for example, she cites railroads, highways, electricity and the Internet as precedents for the Care Grid. Since the professions she is dealing with are interpersonal, high-touch and low-tech by definition, public education or policing might have provided better analogies. "The Age of Dignity" is not as well written as Roz Chast's "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?" and Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End," both of which appeared on last year's "best books" lists, but it offers a critical and complementary perspective on this important issue. Anyone who loves an older person - or anyone who is facing old age - would do well to read all three. LOUISE ARONSON, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is the author of a collection of stories, "A History of the Present Illness."
Library Journal Review
As the baby boomer generation ages and life expectancy grows, the United States will continue to see a significant increase in elderly populations, which will require more caregivers and government support. Poo (director, National Domestic Workers Alliance; codirector, Caring Across Generations) successfully argues that now is the time to consider cultural, behavioral, and policy changes in how the elderly and those caregivers who support them are treated and regarded. In addition to providing background and statistical data on the increasing elderly population in America, the author thoroughly examines issues surrounding elderly caregivers, including the low wages they receive for an arguably demanding job, family members who care for their elders, immigrant populations frequently serving as caregivers and domestic workers, issues surrounding women being primary caregivers, and much more. Poo also discusses practical policy considerations that may address these issues and cultural attitudes or behaviors about these demographics, which she maintains should be further examined. Includes useful notes, appendixes, and photos. VERDICT Thoughtful, moving, and relatable, with numerous personal and professional anecdotes, Poo delivers a concise discussion recommended for readers interested in the social sciences or elder care.-Jennifer Harris, Southern New Hampshire Univ. Lib., Manchester (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.