The major specific aim of the proposed 42 month research project is to explore the relationship of chronic, lifelong poverty to notions of personal and cultural identity in later life. Thus the focus is on the personal meaning and experience of chronic poverty from the perspective of old age. While the incidence of poverty among the aged has declined in the last decades (although it has recently continued to rise), in reality, some 12% of elders were poor and 8% near poor in 1990; chronic poverty among a large segment of the aged has been an unremitting feature of life. Little specifically is known about the experience of chronic poverty in later life and in life course perspective and about the effects of this on self and identity. This is an anthropological study of personal meaning, this defined as each person's interpretation or version of her own life, abstracted from shared, cultural meanings and individual experience. Key questions to be addressed in the proposed research include the following: What is the experience of life long and current poverty: What is it like to have been poor all your life and now be old? How do poor elders compare themselves to other elders? How do notions of what the life course as a sociocultural construct (its stages and transitions) differ for elders who are chronically poor from those who are not? How do poor elders evaluate their lives retrospectively? What is the status of developmental notions including generativity, integrity and lifetime accomplishments among the chronically poor elders? We operationalize chronic poverty on the basis of both current income and a general lifetime history of poverty. Our sample will consist of 240 formerly married women (widowed, separated, divorced), age 70 and older, divided int the following study groups of 60 informants each: Poor African-and European-Americans and for comparison, Non-poor European- and African-Americans. We will use qualitative interviewing techniques; each subject will be interviewed in 3 weekly approximately 1-2 hour sessions on:Background, Life History; Financial Life History; Life Time and Current Achievements; The Self; The Ideal Life Course and the Future; and social Supports and the Meaning of Economic Assets.
