Dissertation Research: Determinants of Social Status in the Elderly: A Field Study in American and Western Samoa

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9816523Beall / Lindstrom-Ufuti This award supports the dissertation research of an anthropology student from Case Western Reserve University. The student will test the hypothesis that the social status of elders in a developing society is higher than the status of elders in a more developed society, after controlling for other determinants. The project will take place in Samoa, comparing the more traditional Western and the more modernized American Samoa. The student will collect data on the social and functional status of the elderly from a total of 600 ethnographic interviews with elders 60 years old and older, younger adult family and household members, and younger non-relative village residents. The data will include age, sex, modernization variables including social, village and household level measures, social rank, and social status. This research will advance our understanding of the modernization process and its outcomes. At a time when the world's elderly population is growing rapidly and developing nations are in increasing contact with the Western world, increasing our in-depth understanding of the nature of elders' social status under changing socio-cultural conditions is of key importance. In addition the research will contribute to the training of a young social scientist and advance our understanding of this important region of the world.