Ethel Shanas (Chicago, September 6, 1914 – Evanston, Illinois, January 20, 2005) was an American scholar in the fields of Sociology of medicine and gerontology.
The results were published in the collective book Old People in Three Industrial Societies (1968), and Shanas and her Danish colleagues later updated the research by repeating the surveys in their respective countries in 1975.
Second, although later surveys will conclude that the situation had changed, Shanas’ studies in the 1950s and 1960s observed that most of the elderly in the United States were not isolated but were supported by their children, grandchildren, and neighbors, and regarded themselves as fully integrated in their communities.
[3] Shanas’ further comparative research extended to Europe showed that in the United Kingdom and Denmark social welfare structures were as, or more, important than the families in supporting the elderly, but this did not prevent cases of poverty, lack of health care, and isolation.
[4] Up to the end of her career, Shanas continued to believe that in Western advanced industrial societies the elderly have a better relation with their children than conventional wisdom would maintain, and that the family remains “the first resource for older persons in need of emotional and social support.”[3]