Negative Stereotypes Of The Elderly

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Useless, a burden, grouchy, frail, incompetent, a horrible driver, senile, and stubborn. All of these words are used to describe the elderly in today's society. Are these stereotypes true? Of course not! Like all stereotypes, when they are placed on a group of people you lose individuality. Each elderly person is different, some may be grouchy, some may be horrible drivers but it does not count for each individual. Society does a great disservice to our elderly, that should have been changed years ago. Society has a tendency to push them to the side once they require more help with everyday activities. Instead of treating the elderly with respect, love, and kindness, once they become a certain age they are looked at as an inconvenience, a burden, and so many other negative adjectives. This paper will look into the ridiculous negative stereotypes society places on the elderly population, by means of research and an interview conducted with a Centenarian. …show more content…
Department of Health and Human Services (2013), the elderly 65 and over numbered 43 million. Which equals out to 1 in every 7 Americans, or almost 14 percent of the population is in this age range. The average life expectancy is 85 for females and 82 for males. In this age group women outnumber men by 6 million more. This could be the reason why older men were more likely to be married then the women, over 36 percent of women in this age group are widows. The population of the elderly is expected to increase even more due to the increase of births after World War II. The average income for this generation is just over 27 thousand dollars for males and a little over 16 thousand dollars for females. However, most of the reported income came from social

Phoenix 125 Week 2

| |Stereotypes |Beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotypes can be positive, | | |negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many | | |societies. | |Prejudice |A negative belief or feeling about a particular…

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