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Leadership, Politics, and Ageism

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Synonyms

Age stereotypes and leadership; Ageism and leadership; Ageism and politics

Definition

Ageism involves the negative attitudes towards, stereotyping of, and discrimination against older people (Levy 2016; Levy and Macdonald 2016).

Overview

By the year 2030, 72 million Americans will be over the age of 65 and account for 20% of the US population (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013). Aside from older adults representing a larger portion of the total population, they are also living longer and thus staying in the workforce longer. As such, the representativeness and prevalence of older adults in positions of leadership in domains such as business and politics is an important area of study.

Research demonstrates that older persons are evaluated more negatively than younger persons and these negative attitudes are expressed by individuals across the age continuum (Nelson 2016). As the population of older adults continues to grow and as many societies worldwide remain...

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Correspondence to Ashley Lytle .

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© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Lytle, A., Macdonald, J. (2019). Leadership, Politics, and Ageism. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_600-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_600-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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