AARP

AARP began in 1958 as the American Association of Retired Persons, founded by a retired California educator named Ethel Percy Andrus who had been shocked to find a former colleague living in poverty. Andrus set out to help older Americans secure affordable insurance and a measure of dignity in retirement, at a time when growing old often meant growing poor. What began as a self-help association grew into one of the largest membership organizations in the country.

The organization's appeal was practical. It offered its members discounts, insurance, and a steady stream of advice on the business of aging, and tens of millions of Americans signed up. But that vast membership was also a source of enormous political power, and AARP became a formidable lobby, mobilizing its members whenever the programs they depended on came under threat.

Its influence centered on the two pillars of the American welfare state for the elderly — Social Security and Medicare. Politicians learned that proposals to cut or restructure those programs risked the wrath of AARP's members, who voted in high numbers, giving the programs a reputation as the third rail of American politics. Officially nonpartisan, the organization nonetheless shaped decades of debate over how the nation cares for its old.

As the American population aged, AARP's constituency only grew, and with it the organization's stake in the future of retirement and health care. Its history reflects a profound demographic transformation — the graying of America — and the political muscle that older citizens, once easily ignored, came to wield in a nation increasingly shaped by their numbers.