The story
Founded by Ethel Percy Andrus in 1958.1
20th century
AARP was founded in 1958 by Ethel Percy Andrus, a retired California public school teacher and principal.
Andrus had been an advocate for health insurance coverage for retired teachers. Volunteering with the California Retired Teachers Association (CRTA), Andrus sought out former teachers who were struggling on their $40/month state pensions. Her goal was to get them out of poverty and access to affordable health insurance.
In 1944, Andrus checked on a former Spanish teacher who was ill and found her living in a chicken coop. Like many other retirees at the time, her pension was not enough to afford adequate housing or healthcare. Before Medicare was enacted in 1965, no national program existed in the United States to provide health insurance to people aged 65 and older. At the same time, many states enforced mandatory retirement, forcing people to leave their jobs and forfeit health coverage. The poverty rate for Americans 65 and older was 35 percent higher than any other age group. Shocked by what she saw, Andrus helped the teacher get the care she needed and began searching for ways to improve older adults' health and financial security.
In 1947, Andrus formed the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA) to secure affordable group health coverage. She met with 42 private insurance companies who deemed adults over 65 to be "uninsurable" and was rejected each time. The policy that Andrus had in mind covered individuals aged 65 and older, with no exclusions for pre-existing health conditions. Leonard Davis, an insurance broker from New York, offered to work with Andrus to develop a pilot program for retired teachers in New York. The experiment was a financial success, and he and Andrus teamed up to establish a national version – the NRTA Health Plan insured by Continental Casualty Co. in 1955. In 1958, the American Association of Retired Persons Membership (AARP) was incorporated and reached 130,000 in its first year.
The NRTA/AARP insurance model was the first in the United States to open a new insurance market for older Americans. AARP expanded beyond health insurance and began developing other benefits, programs, and services for its members, each tailored to the needs of people aged 55 and older and filling a market gap. For example, she created one of the first modern retirement homes, Grey Gables, in Ojai, California, in 1954, designed to keep older residents healthy, active, and socially engaged.
Word about the NRTA Health Plan spread, and thousands of retired non-educators who also faced challenges finding health coverage contacted the NRTA about joining. In 1958, Andrus created the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) as a sister organization to NRTA. Through membership in AARP, the general population age 55 and older gained access to the insurance benefits previously limited to former teachers.
In 1958, AARP began publishing its magazine called Modern Maturity to spread the word about the association, keep members informed of its activities, and publicize issues affecting older adults.
National concern about pharmaceutical industry practices at this time prompted U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn), who chaired the Senate Judiciary Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee, to lead a congressional investigation into prescription drug prices, which lasted from 1959 to 1962. Andrus testified four times during the investigation, and NRTA/AARP legislative director Ernest Gidding testified once.
Read the full text
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating the first White House Conference on Aging. He named Andrus to the National Advisory Committee for the first conference, held in 1961. More than 2,500 delegates met in Washington, D.C. over four days to address challenges facing older adults such as poverty, housing, and healthcare, and develop policy recommendations for the administration. White House conferences on aging have been held every decade since the first and are credited with making contributions to U.S. aging policy, including laying the groundwork for Medicare.
At the first conference, AARP spotlighted a potential solution to the growing issue of older adults with mobility problems living independently. It constructed the House of Freedom in downtown Washington, D.C., the nation's first universal design home easily accessible by older adults and people with disabilities. It was built by AARP and the Douglas Fir Plywood Association and signaled the beginning of AARP's work to help older Americans remain independent in their own homes and neighborhoods for as long as they wanted.
By 1962, the combined membership of AARP and NRTA had grown to 400,000, making it one of the largest membership organizations in the United States.
In 1963, Leonard Davis bought out Continental Casualty's AARP/NRTA insurance policies and formed Colonial Penn, his own company, which became the sole provider of insurance to AARP/NRTA.
In 1968, AARP launched Tax-Aide, which matched low and moderate-income people with trained volunteers who provided free tax preparation and filing services.
As AARP grew, it expanded the range of benefits offered to its members. It established a travel service that took members on modestly priced domestic and international trips, created a retired senior volunteer program, and offered a range of discounts.
Increasingly, AARP's members were asking the organization to take on age discrimination in the marketplace. Hundreds of members wrote to AARP in the early years, explaining that auto insurers and rental companies were charging punishing rates for older drivers, classifying them as high-risk and reckless just because of their age. AARP challenged the insurers and rental companies with research that demonstrated drivers over the age of 65 were among the safest.
In 1979, the organization began offering a driver safety course for any licensed driver, taught by volunteers. In 2016, the AARP Driver Safety Program taught 360,000 older drivers in classrooms and another 130,000 through its online course. Some who take the training receive discounts on their insurance premiums. In 1984, AARP licensed its brand name to auto insurance that members could purchase that could not be canceled solely because of age.
In 1973, AARP created a charitable affiliate, the AARP Andrus Foundation, to award research grants in gerontology.
Andrus continued to run AARP until 1967 when she died of a heart attack at age 82. Today, the NRTA is a division within AARP. She wrote her final column for Modern Maturity four days before she died.
In 1975, AARP had over seven million members, making it one of the largest membership organizations in the country. In 1977, it enrolled its ten millionth member. By the end of the 1980s, membership nearly tripled to 33 million and AARP mailings were so large that the organization had its own zip code. It had tens of thousands of volunteers, the highest circulation magazine in the nation, and rising national awareness. In 1997, it topped Fortune's first annual list of the most powerful lobbying organizations.
In 1984, AARP reduced its membership age from 55 to 50. It began sending "birthday" cards and membership invitations to Americans approaching their 50th birthday.
During this phase of rapid growth for AARP, competing insurance providers entered the marketplace, selling plans tailored to retired Americans. With more competition, the quality of Colonial Penn's offerings and the nature of AARP's relationship with Colonial Penn came into question.
In 1982, NRTA formally merged with AARP. In 1988, it formed a career planning workshop for older Americans who were unemployed and introduced a series of AARP mutual funds in 1997.
By the mid-1990s, telemarketing fraud had become pervasive and cost consumers more than $40 billion annually. A 1995 AARP survey found that more than half of all victims were aged 50 or older, a group that constituted less than one-third of the U.S. population. In 1995, working with the National Association of Attorneys General and the FBI, AARP helped expose a series of boiler room operations targeting thousands of potential phone fraud victims across the country. Acting as victims, AARP members volunteered to collect evidence for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Operation Senior Sentinel targeting illegal telemarketers. In 1996, 78 million baby boomers began turning 50, contributing to AARP's growth.
In 1999, the organization changed from the American Association of Retired Persons to AARP, dropping the word "retirement". At the time, a third of AARP's members were still in the workforce. AARP no longer requires that members be retired, and there are no longer any age restrictions even for full membership.
21st century
Recognizing the changing circumstances of its membership, AARP began offering more work-related tools and resources and ramped up its advocacy against age discrimination in the workplace. Beginning in 2009, AARP backed the "Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act" (POWADA), which aims to restore fairness for workers aged 40 and over by treating age discrimination as seriously as other forms of workplace discrimination. As of 2020, POWADA has been passed by the House of Representatives and is with the Senate.
In 2017, the organization created an online jobs board to connect job seekers over 50 with employers. AARP also created an employer pledge program, where more than 1,000 employers—including Google and CVS—promised to adhere to a set of age-friendly hiring and employment practices.
In 2018, AARP Foundation lawyers represented two employees of the Ohio State University who were forced out of their jobs because of their age. This action resulted in a settlement that helped the employees regain their positions and receive back pay. It required the university to hold training sessions with its staff on preventing age bias.
AARP has advocated for the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) since its passage in 1967, which protects workers at or over the age of 40 from bias in the workplace.
Myechia Minter-Jordan, a public health advocate and physician, was named as the next CEO of the organization in November 2024.
Economic security
Facing growing pension obligations and high annual health cost increases, American businesses in the 2000s began scaling back their retirement and health benefits to employees. While 35 percent of private-sector workers had a defined benefit pension in the 1990s, only 18 percent did in 2013. Beginning in 2004, AARP opposed attempts to undermine the guaranteed nature of the Social Security program through privatization or diverting Social Security payroll taxes to private accounts.
AARP's research indicates that nearly half (57 million) of American workers have no access to a retirement savings plan through their employers. Through its state offices, the organization began advocating individual states to enact work and save programs, which made it easier for businesses to create a private retirement savings account for employees. As of 2020, eighteen states had signed Work and Save programs into law.
Health care
Continuing a theme that began at its founding, AARP during this period used its lobbying efforts to advocate against reductions in Medicare benefits and to protect the federal program that offered health coverage to older Americans.
In 2003, AARP supported legislation proposed by Republican President George W. Bush that included partial coverage for prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, among other things. Democratic congressional leaders, seeking a more generous benefit, strongly opposed the bill and prompted thousands of AARP members to quit in protest. Six years later, in 2009, AARP endorsed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) proposed by Democratic President Barack Obama, which protected those with pre-existing health conditions, limited the amount that insurance companies could charge because of age, provided tax credits, and improved drug coverage in Medicare. At that time, more than 50 million Americans were without health insurance coverage at some point during the year. The ACA, which passed a year later, was opposed by Republicans and AARP's support prompted thousands of members to leave the organization.
In 2019, with the price of prescription drugs far outpacing inflation, AARP began lobbying for legislative and industry changes to lower prescription medication costs. AARP supported a bipartisan bill by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) that set caps on drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries and increased pressure on drug companies to lower prices.
That year, AARP also supported the Trump administration's goal of allowing Americans to import lower-cost drugs from other countries. In 2021, the organization backed a House Democratic bill that, among other things, would allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices with manufacturers. AARP backed legislation proposed by President Biden and passed by Congress in 2022 that would enable Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, set caps on out-of-pocket drug spending by those on Medicare and capped the price for insulin at $35.
Brain health
In 2016, the organization created Staying Sharp, a program that allowed people to evaluate their brain health through a scientifically based assessment and receive tips for slowing cognitive decline. In 2018, AARP invested $60 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, which supports research into diagnosis, treatments, and cures for dementia. In 2022, Consumer Reports stated that the AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health found that some dietary supplements promoted for boosting brain health offered no benefit for most people.
From Wikipedia’s article on AARP, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5