Aging Process of Different Ethnic Backgrounds and Prevailing Process of the Concept of Independence in the United States

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This research is to delineate the relationship between aging process of immigrants and the process in which the concept of independence became pervasive among the elderly immigrant people of different ethnic backgrounds by using census original schedules of 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930's, and short-term fieldwork during which I conducted interviewing and collecting additional historical material. Two research sites were chosen for a comparative analysis of European and Asian immigrants : Riverfront in Central Wisconsin and Hilo in Hawaii Island. Census analysis included (1) databasing of the census information, (2) tracing individuals and families over different census years, (3) reconstructing traced families' composition and changes, (4) analysis of the elderly people's strategic choices as reflected in family composition. Being a head of household and being without others except for spouse were taken as operative indicators to have an independent attitude toward leading lives. Based on the census analysis, the collected written material concerning attitudes toward the elderly people and the old age, and the interview data, this research concludes that a hypothesis shaped in the previous research project on European immigrants in Riverfront, namely Polish immigrants, was not negated, that is, the first generation of immigrants who came to Riverfront in the 1880s increased the number of elderly family heads within one generational years. In the case of the Japanese in Hilo, a decision was probably made to stay for lifetime and then to design their retirement age in the beginning of the twentieth century. During the period of 1900 - 1930, a filtering seemed to work on who would decide to stay in America or who would leave, and then many immigrants who stayed were becoming old without models for their own old age. Emerging American life style would suggest older immigrants to take the self-help and to keep youth attitude.