Prior to Social Security, frail and destitute older persons without family members to look after them often ended up in America’s almshouses and poor farms, generally decrepit remnants of England’s punitive quarters for the impoverished and impaired for the preceding 400 years. The old were often mixed in with the mentally incompetent, chronically inebriated, blind and physically disabled of all ages in these almshouses, a situation increasingly embarrassing and unpalatable for America’s policymakers and public alike in the early decades of the 20 th century. The expanding longevity at the time was accompanied by society’s continuing shift from an agrarian to industrial economy, often separating family members and eroding the family unit’s traditional abilities and inclinations to care for older members. (read more…)