American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is a nonpartisan organization for persons fifty years old or over. It is the second largest membership organization in the United States, behind only the Catholic Church, and offers members a major voice in the political process, as well as a variety of services.
Ethel Percy Andrus, a seventy-two-year-old retired high school principal, founded AARP in 1958 as an out-growth of the National Retired Teachers Association, which she had founded in 1947 to confront the tax and pension problems of retired teachers. Andrus envisioned AARP as an organization to serve members by providing assistance with such needs as health insurance and travel services and, more generally, to promote "independence, dignity, and purpose" among older Americans. The organization grew quickly from 50,000 members in 1958, to 750,000 in 1963, to 10 million in 1975, and to some 35 million in 2002, or about 46 percent of all Americans age fifty or older. More than half of all AARP members work, either full-or part-time. AARP attracts people with a low membership fee that entitles members to a variety of educational and community services, volunteer opportunities, and discounts on products and services ranging from health insurance and prescription drugs to rental cars.
AARP's organizational structure enables it to make the maximum use of its membership. At its national headquarters in Washington, D.C., most of the fifteen hundred paid staff members are federal and state lobbyists and analysts in an in-house think tank. AARP has offices in every state and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands that administer community service and education programs and "reach out" to local policy makers. AARP uses sophisticated direct-mail marketing to attract new members and to communicate with current members; in one year AARP mailings accounted for 1.5 percent of all nonprofit third-class mail sent in the United States. Two radio series and a Web site offer information on current topics, but the centerpiece of AARP's communications with its membership is Modern Maturity, a magazine that ranks among the nation's leading publications in circulation. In 2001, AARP launched My Generation, a new magazine for members age 50–55 that addresses concerns of the "baby boom" generation.
Some have said that AARP's membership is more interested in discounts on products and services than on the association's legislative agenda. Nevertheless, the fact that its membership equals a substantial portion of the electorate, about one-third in 1992, prompts politicians to listen to AARP, especially regarding Social Security and Health Care issues. For example, in the early 1980s, the administration of President Ronald Reagan proposed cuts in entitlements, including social security and Medicare. In response, AARP mobilized the grassroots support that helped Democrats take from Republicans twenty-six seats in the House of Representatives.
In 2000, AARP launched an aggressive voter education effort that included events in thirty-six states, the distribution of more than 20 million issue guides, presidential candidate forums, and the creation of an online voter registration site. At the end of the twentieth century, AARP was putting its political muscle behind a number of issues, including protecting social security benefits, assuring pension benefits for older employees, nursing home reform, low-income prescription drug coverage, assistance to victims of telemarketing fraud, and increased funding for home and community-based long-term care.
Bibliography
Morris, Charles R. The AARP: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations. New York: Times Books, 1996.
Price, Matthew C. Justice between Generations: The Growing Power of the Elderly in America. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997.
Schurenberg, Eric, and Lani Luciano. "The Empire Called AARP." Money (October 1988): 128–138.
—Scott T. Schutte/C. P.
