Socialization and aging group consciousness: the effect of neighborhood age concentration.

In order to test hypotheses regarding effects of age concentration upon socialization and aging group consciousness, 1,185 persons 60 years of age and over living in areas representing low, average, and high concentrations of older persons were interviewed. Results indicated that age concentration was associated with knowledge of services and with age of persons in formal and informal neighborhood networks but was not related to attitude toward older persons in the abstract, to own age identification, to associational preference, or to taking political action. It appears that age concentration influences access to, more than choice of age peers. Both socialization and aging group consciousness are associated with age, health and socioeconomic status. It may be concluded that the ecological variable of age concentration in the range encountered by most older persons has only limited effects.