The Politics of a Majority-Minority Nation Aging, Diversity, and Immigration
By Juan Fernando Torres-Gil and Jaqueline L. Angel
2018 Springer Publishing Company
This timely and critical book takes on a new phenomenon facing the United States and poses the stark question: Will the United States be prepared when its older population doubles and we become a majority-minority society by 2050? In these tempestuous times of immigration controversies, the authors provide a road map for moving beyond immigration politics and address the profound questions facing all Americans, regardless of ideology, partisanship and social and economic status: Who will be the future workforce and taxpayers? Who will replace the declining non-Hispanic white population? Who will take care of elders when the long-term care workforce increasingly depends on immigrants, foreign workers and minorities? These and other questions are central to this book, which posits that we will have no choice but to enact some form of comprehensive immigration reform and address the crucial needs facing all of us: retirement, health and income security. Written in a nonpartisan manner and with clarity and expertise, this book and its policy proposals illuminates the changes and opportunities that face the nation by concisely addressing a wide range of topics — including immigration reform, the politics of aging and economic security — and provides a glimpse of how the “next America” might look.
Juan Fernando M. Torres-Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional and policy arenas. He is a professor of social welfare and publicpolicy at UCLA and directs the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging. He has served as Associate and Acting Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and has written seven books and more than 100 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America (1992) and Lessons From Three Nations, Volumes I and II (2007). Professor Torres-Gil’s extensive public policy experience includes serving as the first U.S. assistant secretary on aging in the Clinton administration, vice chair of the National Council on Disability in the Obama administration, and earlier as staff director for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Aging.
Jacqueline L. Angel is professor of public affairs and sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Population Research Center and LBJ School Center for Health and Social Policy at The University of Texas at Austin. She did her postdoctoral training in mental health services research at Rutgers University and at the Pennsylvania State University Program in Demography of Aging. Her research examines health and retirement issues in the U.S., with a focus on older minorities, the impact of social policy on the Hispanic population and Mexican-American families. She is author/co-author/editor of 80 journal articles, 30 book chapters and 10 books. Her recent publications include Latinos in an Aging World, Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas and Handbook of the Sociology of Aging.