Social Group Statistics: Elderly and Aging

Includes Profile of Older Americans, an electronic brochure with basic statistics; Aging Integrated Database, an online-query system for AOA program statistics; Census data and population estimates; and minority profiles

Basic statistics from CDC publications, links to more data and related resources.

This report assesses the health of the U.S. population age 65 and older and makes recommendations for improvement.  Statistics on 15 key indicators covering health status, health behaviors, preventative care and screening, and injuries are available at the national, regional, or state level.

Features a report titled Older Americans: Key Indicators of Well-Being, covering 38 key indicators at the national level.  Also includes a Retirement Resources report, and a bibliography of Data Sources on Older Americans.

"The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA), located within ICPSR, is funded by the National Institute on Aging. NACDA's mission is to advance research on aging by helping researchers to profit from the under-exploited potential of a broad range of datasets.
NACDA acquires and preserves data relevant to gerontological research, processing as needed to promote effective research use, disseminates them to researchers, and facilitates their use. By preserving and making available the largest library of electronic data on aging in the United States, NACDA offers opportunities for secondary analysis on major issues of scientific and policy relevance."

Access to data for secondary analysis from this biannual survey of older Americans that "paints an emerging portrait of an aging America's physical and mental health, insurance coverage, financial status, family support systems, labor market status, and retirement planning."  The report Growing Older in America: The Health and Retirement Study provides summary statistics.

"The Longitudinal Studies of Aging (LSOAs) is a collaborative project of National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA). It is a multicohort study of persons 70 years of age and over designed primarily to measure changes in the health, functional status, living arrangements, and health services utilization of two cohorts of Americans as they move into and through the oldest ages."

The 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey (NHHCS) is one in a continuing series of nationally representative sample surveys of U.S. home health and hospice agencies. It is designed to provide descriptive information on home health and hospice agencies, their staffs, their services, and their patients. NHHCS was first conducted in 1992 and was repeated in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000, and most recently in 2007.

"The National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS) is a continuing series of national sample surveys of nursing homes, their residents, and their staff. Although each of these surveys emphasized different topics, they all provided some common basic information about nursing homes, their residents, and their staff. All nursing homes included in this survey had at least three beds and were either certified (by Medicare or Medicaid) or had a state license to operate as a nursing home."