With 40 million members, the AARP is an influential lobbying organization that also provides services for Americans aged 50 and older. Ethel Percy Andrus, a retired high school principal from Los Angeles, launched what she originally called the American Association of Retired Persons in 1958 with financial support from Leonard Davis, a 32-year-old insurance broker from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The organization was an outgrowth of the National Retired Teachers Association, which Andrus had established 11 years earlier to seek health insurance for aging educators. It adopted its abbreviated name in 1998 in recognition of the fact that a large number of its members were in fact still working.
The association, with headquarters in Washington, focuses on four areas: hunger, income, housing and isolation afflicting older people. It works through lobbying and legal advocacy to fight these problems and support older Americans.
