Twenty percent of the U.S. population is over age 65, and that cohort is increasing rapidly, with the fastest-growing group being the 85-plus crowd. The implications for labor, health care, public finance, and related concerns are immense. Organized into 10 information-dense chapters, this statistical compilation offers a portrait of America's older population. The hundreds of charts and tables that are the core of the resource provide a demographic picture of U.S. seniors with regard to age, ethnicity, household relationships, education, living arrangements, and similar topics. Data is uniformly categorized by states, counties, cities, metropolitan and micropolitan areas, and 116th Congressional Districts. A tremendous wealth of provocative numerical data is available in these pages. Four million American grandparents over age 65 live with their grandchildren, and a quarter of them are financially responsible for food, clothing, and shelter. In 13 states, over 20 percent of this group lives below the poverty level. This well-designed reference source is packed with information and confidently recommended for university libraries supporting programs in health, economics, sociology, and related fields and for research-oriented public libraries.

Booklist