This study examines the status and treatment of the elderly in non-industrial societies. Associations are found between social complexity, subsistence type, and the status and treatment of the elderly.

This study discusses the distribution of the treatment of the aged across a sample of pre-industrial societies. Data illustrate that the elderly were treated in a non-supportive or death-hastening manner in the majority of societies, dispelling the notion that a golden age/isle existed in pre-industrial societies in which the elderly were revered and supported. Results also suggest a relationship between age and treatment of the elderly and climate, social, and subsistence variables and the treatment of the aged.

This article examines the status of the elderly cross-culturally, proposing that familial complexity, unlineal descent, and unilocal residence are predictors of high status. The authors theorize that elderly male status will be highest in patrilineal and patrilocal societies; elderly female status will be highest in matrilineal and matrilocal societies. Some support is found for these patterns, but the authors ultimately regard them as too simple to adequately predict status of the elderly.

This article investigates how status of the elderly is affected by economic type, family organization, inheritance of real property, and unilocal residence patterns. Multivariate analysis ultimately suggests that agricultural economy, patrilocal residence, and fully extended family systems are significant predictors of higher status of the elderly. No major gender differences were discovered.

This chapter examines correlates of gerontrocide. Previously suggested predictors, such as nomadism and harsh climate, were not found to be associated with gerontrocide, but data suggested that several other variables such as social stratification, subsistence type, and rule of descent, are significant predictors.

Explores 109 traits relating primarily to physical habitat, economy, political and social organization, and religion, to see how they relate to the role and treatment of the aged. General patterns were sought. Numerous ethnographic examples are given.

This article reassesses the cross-cultural work on status of the elderly and tests two additional variables, socialization values and ancestor worship, as predictors of the status of the elderly.

This paper "reduces Murdock's 210 categories to 30 variables, and intercorrelates and factor analyzes the variables for six world subdivisions as well as for the entire world." This article also discusses factor analysis as a method and examines the correlations more closely between the two regions that differed the most, North America and the Circum-Mediterranean.

This article explores factors affecting the status of the elderly, looking particularly at type of family, economy, and wealth transfer.

This study presents a sociological theory of marriage type based on socioeconomic organization. Results suggest that intensive agriculture, more stratification, greater political integration, a fixed settlement pattern, a larger population, and greater labor specialization tended to be correlates of monogamy.