Understanding Elder Abuse in Minority Populations

Toshio Tatara

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781317714828
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1999. Research on elder abuse in the United States has made great strides in recent years. As a result, we have been able to define and discover the causes of elder abuse, design tools to assess the risk of abuse, develop and implement treatment and prevention strategies, and evaluate programs for victims and perpetrators. However, this research has been derived from studies whose subjects were primarily Caucasian. This is not because elder abuse does not take place in minority communities, but rather because researchers wanted first to study the issue in its broadest sense.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315784540-1

Toshio Tatara

Research on elder abuse in the United States has made great strides in helping to delineate definitions of abuse, neglect, and exploitation, explore causes of various types of maltreatment, develop and implement ways to treat and prevent the problem, design tools to assess the risk factors of abuse, and evaluate and validate programs serving victims and perpetrators (Stein, 1989). Thus, a considerable amount of information is available today regarding the possible causes of elder abuse and the effect of abuse on elders and their families, as well as about ways in which the problem should be combated. Yet what is known about elder abuse today has been derived largely from studies of individuals and groups that were mostly White. It is not that minorities were excluded from studies of elder abuse, but rather that early researchers were more preoccupied with efforts to understand the nature of elder mistreatment generally than they were concerned with the circumstances of particular racial or ethnic minority elders. As public awareness of elder abuse gradually rose and more researchers became involved with inquiries into elder abuse, a lack of (as well as a need for) knowledge of how elder abuse is defined, identified, and treated in minority populations became apparent (Moon & Williams, 1993).

This book comes at an opportune time in history when "cultural diversity" in aging is no longer just a concept but a reality in the United States, and an "aging society" is just around the corner: There is now an urgent need for developing new approaches to address issues in such a society (Bass, Kutza, & Torres-Gil, 1990; Stanford & Torres-Gil, 1991). The main purpose of the book is to critically examine abuse and neglect in several racial and ethnic minority populations mostly from minority researchers' viewpoints and based on their empirical studies. What is offered in this book is relevant today, but the book's relevance to the field of elder abuse may increase in the future, as the nation's minority elder populations rapidly grow.

Table 1.1 U.S. Elder Population from 1997 Through 2030

	1997	2000	2010	2020	2030
U.S. elder population, × 1000	44,159	45,363	55,623	73,769	87,875
Percent increase from 1997	—	2.7	26.0	67.1	99.0
Total U.S. population, × 1000	267,645	274,634	297,716	322,742	346,899
Percent increase from 1997	—	2.6	11.2	20.6	29.6
Percent of elder population	16.5	16.5	18.7	22.8	25.3

Note: For the purpose of this analysis, an elder is defined as anyone who is 60 years of age or older.

Source: Day, Population Projections of the United States by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1995 to 2050, 1996.

Demographic Changes Among the Elderly in Minority Populations

The elder population is growing very fast in the United States, and if current trends continue, in about another 30 years, it is expected that one out of four persons (or 25.3%) in this country will be an elder, 60 years of age or older (Day, 1996). Specifically, there will be a rise in the number of the U.S. elder population from 44,159,000 in 1997 to 87,875,000 in 2030—an increase of 99.0%. It is well accepted that this stunning rate of growth in the elder population is attributed largely to the fact that the "baby boomers" will be becoming members of the elder population in a 20- to 30-year period, right after the turn of the next century, and more people will be living longer. The U.S. Bureau of the Census predicts that during the same period, the total U.S. population will increase only by 29.6%, from 267,645,000 to 346,899,000, as shown in Table 1.1. One of the most amazing features of the current demographic changes in the U.S. population is the rapid growth of racial and ethnic minority elder populations. This phenomenon is not new and must have been in progress since the 1960s, but it has not been widely recognized or discussed (Spencer, 1988; American Society on Aging, 1992).

Table 1.2 presents the U.S. Census Bureau's projections of how the minority elder populations, as well as the White elderly population, in this country will grow in numbers from 1997 to 2030. For the purpose of this analysis, the following four groups are defined as minority elderly: Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian.

As shown in Table 1.2, the White elder population will grow steadily from 37,010,000 in 1997 to 64,292,000 in 2030, resulting in an increase of 73.7%. On the other hand, projected increases in the numbers of minority elder populations over the same period are phenomenal: For example, the Black elder population will rise from 3,671,000 in 1997 to 8,484,000 in 2030 (an increa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Contributors Page
• Preface Page
• Acknowledgments Page
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction
• PART ONE: ELDER ABUSE IN BLACK COMMUNITIES
• PART TWO: ELDER ABUSE IN HISPANIC COMMUNITIES
• PART THREE: ELDER ABUSE IN ASIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
• PART FOUR: ELDER ABUSE IN AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITIES
• PART FIVE: ELDER ABUSE IN MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: THEORY AND PRACTICE
• Concluding Remarks
• Index