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Gerontology is a branch of sociology that studies aging and the problems—psychological, economic, and social—that arise in old age. Gerontology includes the field of geriatrics, the medical study of the biological process of aging and the treatment of illnesses of old age.

Since the days of the ancient Greeks, speculation about aging has gone hand in hand with the development of medicine as a science. During the 1800s, researchers began to study populations and social patterns of aging in a systematic fashion. During the 1930s, the International Association of Gerontology was organized. Over the next decade, governmental bodies sponsored conferences on aging, and by 1945 the Gerontological Society of America, Inc., was established in Washington, D.C.

In the United States in the late twentieth century, the median age of the total population has increased. On average there are more and more older people than younger ones...