Publications
Aging: Natural Law or Public Policy?
2019
Finkelstein, R. (February, 2019). Aging: Natural law or public policy? Speaker Series: NYU Aging Incubator. New York University, New York, NY.
Ruth Finkelstein
The world’s population is growing older. The proportion of children is decreasing. While many see our aging world population as an emergency, we need to question our assumptions. Until now, our thinking about aging has been descriptive. Whether aging is an actual crisis or an opportunity depends on how we age. Concepts like the “dependency ratio” fail to let us see how people really contribute across the life cycle. The theory of cumulative disadvantage/advantage (CDA) helps us tools to understand how people age differently across the life cycle. Applying CDA to policy development can help us to insure that everyone has opportunities for healthy aging. A talk by Dr. Ruth Finkelstein, executive director at Brookdale, describes how CDA operates across the lifespan as part of the New York University’s Aging Incubator speaker series (Part One, Part Two, Part Three).