The elderly should be a priority clientele for the Cooperative Extension Service now and in the future.Projections beyond the year 2000 point toward increasingly greater life expectancies.People in the United States today can anticipate living beyond 70, continuing to enjoy an extended and productive life.Not only is the number of older people increasing, the proportion also continues to increase.By the year 2000, people 65 and older are expected to represent 13% of the population, and this percentage may climb to more than 21% by 2030.1If social and psychological well-being are to accompany physical vitality in old age, we need to recognize education's potential contributions toward well-being.2What are the implications for Extension and its efforts to strengthen individuals and families?How can Extension determine and then respond to the needs and interests of older people?Our study set out to study those questions and identify what the elderly want to learn, where they want to learn it, and how this information could be applied in Extension programming.All elderly, however, can't be viewed as a composite group with the same characteristics, interests, needs, goals, or desires.The elderly of the 1990s and each successive decade may differ
Weber et al. (Sun,) studied this question.