FRED C. PAMPEL is Research Professor of Sociology and a Research Associate in the Population Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1977, and has previously taught at the University of Iowa, University of North Carolina, and Florida State University. His research focuses on socioeconomic disparities in health behaviors, smoking in particular, and on the experimental and quasi-experimental methods for evaluation of social programs for youth. He is the author of several books on population aging, cohort change, and public policy, and his work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Forces, and the European Sociological Review.
Fred C Pampel describes how age combines with other components of inequality by comparing the influence of group membership on social inequality before and after the life course transition to old age. He looks at the differences in public policy and how age inequality - more than the other sources of inequality - relates closely to government policies and studies other societies in which both age group differences and overall inequality differ from those in the United States. Pampel makes comparison of the United States with other nations a central component of the book, providing greater understanding of the larger forces that shape old age.
