Aging and Old Age offers fresh insight into a wide range of social and political issues relating to the elderly, such as health care, crime, social security, and discrimination. From their dread of death to the extraordinary law-abidingness of the old, from their loquacity to their penny-pinching, Posner paints a rich, revealing, and unsentimental portrait of the millions of elderly people in the United States.

Why are old people, presumably with less to lose, more unwilling to take risks than young people? Why don't the elderly in this country command the respect and affection they once did and still do elsewhere? How does aging affect driving ability and criminal behavior? And how does it relate to creativity across different careers?

1. Observing that people change both physically and cognitively as they age, Posner suggests that each of us has, in succession, two separate selves - younger and older - with different abilities, interests, and behaviors, an insight that helps clarify a number of issues concerning the elderly.