Dying to Be Old: A Sociological Analysis of Old Age as Cause of Death

While gerontology and issues of aging are attracting more focus and scholarship, little has been done to examine the social constructions of old age as perception, particularly in historical contexts. We use data from gravestones and burial records (1870s–1950s) of a single, large, midwestern cemetery to examine those who were said to have died of old age or senility for patterned differences in the application of these labels. We then compare this labeled group with all others of the same age range in the cemetery for fundamental demographic differences that would explain the presence or absence of these elder-status labels. Though differences in patterns between and within groups were often small and not statistically significant, they are typically in the direction predicted, and contribute to some historical sense of old age as social construction.