Why Should I Consider a Career in Gero Social Work?

Working with older adults can be a rewarding experience. Here are some more reasons to consider a career in gerontological social work! Click here to download this page as a Word document.

Dramatic Demographic Changes

• By the year 2050, one out of every seven people in the world will be 65 years old or older.
• Significant to issues of social justice, the number of those over age 85—elders with the highest rates of chronic illness, poverty, and living alone—is expected to quintuple to more than 19 million by 2050.
• The older population worldwide is becoming more ethnically and racially diverse. The percentage of elders of color will grow from the current 17% to over 33% by 2050, faster than the growth rate of the Caucasian population.
• A generation of life has been added to average life expectancy, resulting in more three, four and five generation families.
• For children born in 1900, by age 30, only 21% had grandparents alive; for those born in 2000, by age 30, 76% will have at least one grandparent alive.

The Universality of the Aging Experience across the Life Course

• Aging is a normal process that affects all of us, not an incurable problem.
• Age is the one social position that we all hold, regardless of our gender, race/ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, or physical/mental ability. And ageism is the one “ism” that we all encounter. We ARE the “rapidly aging society.” It is not in the distant future or happening to someone else!
• Older people themselves are not the problem. Age-associated problems and age-based inequities are often created by whether and how our society chooses to respond to the needs of our older population.
• Issues of aging and older adults are linked with all the fields of practice—substance use, mental health, health care, child welfare (e.g., grandparents are primary caregivers to grandchildren), or corrections (e.g., the graying of the inmate population). Aging across the life course is inextricably intertwined with all that social workers do!

The Documented Need for Geriatric Social Workers

• 60,000 to 70,000 geriatric social workers will be needed by 2020, yet less than 10% of that projected number is now available.
• The demand for geriatric social workers will increase by 45% by 2015.
• Geriatric social work ranks as one of the top 20 careers in terms of growth potential.
• An Institute on Medicine 2008 Report concluded that the supply of health care providers, including social workers, is inadequate for meeting the health and psychosocial needs of future older adults.

The Gap between the Need and Supply

• Only 9% of a 2005 sample of licensed National Association of Social Workers (NASW) members identified aging as their specific field of practice, with less than 5% trained in gerontological social work.
• Nearly 75% of this sample worked in some capacity with older adults but had not necessarily been trained to do so.
• Recent graduates are less likely to work with older adults then those who graduated in the 1970s. Geriatric social workers are older on average (median age of 50 years) than practitioners in other fields, and are nearing retirement age. Ten percent of practitioners with an MSW and 8% with a BSW reported in 2005 that they plan to retire in two years. When they do so, the demand for geriatric workers will increase even more.
• Geriatric social workers are less diverse in racial and ethnic backgrounds than the current older population they serve and the U.S. civilian population. This gap will grow with the projected increased diversity of elders by 2030.