An Anthropological Study of Well-Bing of the New Generation of Elderly People in Socio-Cultural Changes of the 1990's in the U.S.

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This anthropological study examines the socio-cultural changes occurred between the 1980's and the 1990's in a middle-sized town in Wisconsin and how these changes affect the elderly people's concepts of "well-being" The in-depth interviews and participants observations conducted in this research area found the following.(1) The town in the 1980's still kept an atmosphere of being a "Polish town." In the 1990's, large scale shopping malls replaced local stores, and family dairy farms either closed down or bought other farms to become a large-scale industrialized farms. Hmong refugees settled in this area and thus they have changed a predominantly Euro-American town into a multi-racial town.(2) The community services for senior citizens have gone through three stages.(a) First Stage (from mid-1970's to mid 1980's) : Accommodating social needs of the elderly people by providing social programs and activities at senior centers.(b) Second Stage (from mid-1980's to mid-1990's) : The central focus of services has shifted from social needs to long-term home care.(c) Third Stage (from mid-1990's to present) : Reorganizing community structure to encompass not only senior citizens but also people with disability.(3) The sources of "well-being" for elderly people have not changed since the 1980's. That is, they like to see themselves "being helpful," "being active with other people," and "not stopping learning." However, the locus of their activities is no longer centered at senior centers as it used to be in the 1980's. Indeed, senior centers seem to have lost popularity among elderly people. However, this study has found that services for senior citizens are more widely accepted and incorporated in large society than before, and therefore, senior citizens have more options for loci of their activities than before.