The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years

by Corey M Abramson

Senior citizens from all walks of life face a gauntlet of physical, psychological, and social hurdles. But do the disadvantages some people accumulate over the course of their lives make their final years especially difficult? Or does the quality of life among poor and affluent seniors converge at some point? The End Game investigates whether persistent socioeconomic, racial, and gender divisions in America create inequalities that structure the lives of the elderly. Corey Abramson’s portraits of seniors from diverse backgrounds offer an intimate look at aging as a stratified social process. They illustrate that disparities in wealth, access to health care, neighborhood conditions, and networks of friends and family shape how different people understand and adapt to the challenges of old age. Social Security and Medicare are helpful but insufficient to alleviate deep structural inequalities. Yet material disadvantages alone cannot explain why seniors respond to aging in different ways. Culture, in all its variations, plays a crucial role. Abramson argues that studying the experience of aging is central to understanding inequality, in part because this segment of the population is rapidly growing. But there is another reason. The shared challenges of the elderly―declining mobility and health, loss of loved ones and friends―affect people across the socioeconomic spectrum, allowing for powerful ethnographic comparisons that are difficult to make earlier in life. The End Game makes clear that, despite the shared experiences of old age, inequality remains a powerful arbiter of who wins and who loses in American society.

Genres: Sociology, School

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2015

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the end game, we all die. It is depressing. It is also a fact! We all take different paths to that end, with different tools and strategies at our disposal. And all of that begins with our lives and choices right now! Good information here for contemplation. Very well presented, if not a bit biased. It almost felt like he researched with the biased hypothesis in mind and then wrote used the data he gathered to reinforce that hypothesis instead of exploring other explanations. The sampling he used was a bit small too, imo. I would love to see the data expanded to more communities in different parts of the country. I must say that in the conclusion he brought it all together sans the bias and ended with a poignant truth. Worth the read!

[Nastya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for a sociology class. This offered a much more intimate look at aging. Eye opening.

[Ashleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look into the aging process in terms of SES,race,and gender.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is a sociologist, but for me this is really a book about ethics. What is the ethically right way to treat seniors in our (affluent American) society? Should every senior be entitled to a "decent" experience in old age, irrespective of the circumstances of their earlier lives as adults? This is an argument easy to sustain for children; does it also apply to seniors?

The book provides a clear and readable explanation about why inequality exists, and what the inequalities are, among seniors coping with the common challenges of being old - playing the end game. Understanding the issues helps one come to a position on the ethics. This book is well worth reading by all in our society who are fortunate enough to be able to contribute to a solution, if action is indeed ethically deemed to be needed.