AARP The Magazine

About AARP The Magazine

It is the largest-circulation magazine in the United States — and has been since the late 1980s. It arrives in tens of millions of mailboxes six times a year, in three separate editions tailored to readers in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. It is AARP The Magazine, the flagship publication of AARP (the American Association of Retired Persons), and it is arguably the most widely read print publication in the Western world. Born in 1958 as Modern Maturity, it has chronicled — and helped define — what it means to grow older in America for nearly seventy years.

History and Founding

The magazine was established in 1958 under the name Modern Maturity, published from Lakewood, California, as the member magazine of the young AARP organization. AARP's founder, Ethel Percy Andrus, wrote a column for the magazine; she penned her final column just four days before her death in 1967, a measure of how central the publication was to the organization's identity from the start.

As AARP's membership exploded — from 7 million in 1975 to 10 million in 1977 to 33 million by the end of the 1980s — Modern Maturity's circulation grew with it, mailed to every member. By the late 1980s, it had become the highest-circulation magazine in the nation, a position it has held ever since — by then AARP's mailings were so vast that the organization had its own ZIP code. In 1984, AARP reduced its membership age from 55 to 50, widening the magazine's audience to younger baby boomers; in the 1990s, it launched a second, younger-skewing publication, MyGeneration, aimed at the leading edge of the boom.

The 2002 Merger

In 2002, AARP combined its two publications into a single flagship: Modern Maturity, with a circulation of 17.1 million, and MyGeneration, with 4 million, were merged to create AARP: The Magazine (now styled AARP The Magazine). The new magazine was designed to speak to the full 50-plus audience — not as retirees, but as active adults in what the organization calls the second half of life. The rebranding also reflected AARP's own evolution: an organization that had quietly stopped spelling out "American Association of Retired Persons" as it courted younger members who did not think of themselves as retired.

Editorial Focus and Audience

AARP The Magazine focuses on aging issues in the broadest sense: health and wellness, money and work, travel, entertainment, and culture — the practical and pleasurable business of life after 50. Its covers regularly feature prominent figures over 50 — actors, musicians, newsmakers, and cultural icons — in long, intimate interviews. Past cover subjects have included figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and Michelle Obama, reflecting the magazine's focus on accomplished Americans in the second half of life. The magazine publishes roughly 52 editorial pages six times a year in three separate editions: one for readers ages 50–59, one for readers 60–69, and one for those 70 and older — a segmentation unique in American magazine publishing, allowing advertisers and editors alike to speak precisely to each life stage.

The audience is, by definition, AARP's membership: tens of millions of Americans 50 and older. Readership, measured by survey, topped 37 million for the first time in 2017 — meaning the magazine is not only the largest-circulation magazine in America but one of the most-read print publications on earth.

Ownership and Publishing

The magazine is published by AARP, the nonprofit membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is sent to every AARP member as a benefit of membership — the structural reason for its unmatched circulation. The current editor-in-chief is Robert Love, who has led the magazine's editorial operations and its evolution into a modern multiplatform brand.

Print Editions and Frequency

AARP The Magazine is a bi-monthly publication — six issues per year — a frequency it has maintained since its Modern Maturity days. Circulation was reported at 23,428,878 copies as of December 2015, and at 22.5 million in 2017. To put that in perspective: it is roughly five times the circulation of the next-largest American consumer magazines. The three age-targeted editions are printed and mailed separately, a logistical feat unmatched in the industry.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is aarp.org, where its articles, interviews, and service journalism reach millions of additional readers beyond the print membership. AARP's broader digital ecosystem — including the AARP Bulletin, its newsier sibling publication, alongside extensive online resources on health, money, travel, and caregiving — makes the organization one of the largest publishers of 50-plus content in the world. The magazine's celebrity interviews and health reporting are among the most-shared content in the older-adult digital space.

Iconic Features and Franchises

The magazine's signature is the big celebrity cover interview — in-depth conversations with the most famous Americans over 50, photographed and profiled at a stage of life the rest of the media largely ignores. Its service franchises cover the perennial concerns of its readers: health and Medicare, retirement money and Social Security, work after 50, travel, and caregiving. Few publications combine star power and service journalism at this scale: the same issue might carry an intimate interview with a Hollywood legend and a definitive guide to navigating a parent's dementia diagnosis.

Advertising Powerhouse

The magazine's scale makes it an advertising juggernaut. In the second quarter of 2010, AARP: The Magazine sold $23.9 million in advertising — a 14.5 percent increase over the same period the year before, in the depths of the Great Recession. By 2017, a full-page ad cost $667,800, an 18 percent increase over the prior five years. Pharmaceutical companies, financial services firms, travel brands, and automakers all compete for the attention of the 50-plus consumer — the wealthiest demographic cohort in America — and there is no larger print vehicle for reaching them.

Cultural Impact

AARP The Magazine has done as much as any institution to reshape American attitudes toward aging. Where mid-century culture treated 65 as the end of the story, the magazine — and the organization behind it — has spent decades insisting that the years after 50 are a beginning: of second careers, of adventure travel, of reinvention. Its covers, featuring vibrant, accomplished people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, are a standing rebuke to the invisibility of older adults in the rest of the media. The magazine's advocacy journalism on age discrimination, health care, and retirement security has amplified AARP's lobbying power — the organization topped Fortune's first annual list of the most powerful lobbying organizations in 1997.

Awards and Recent Developments

The magazine has earned recognition across the publishing industry for its editorial quality and design. In 2016, Washingtonian magazine dubbed it "the biggest print magazine in the world" — and noted it was about to get bigger. Its newsier sibling, the AARP Bulletin, covers news and advocacy for the same vast membership. As print circulations across the industry have collapsed, AARP The Magazine's membership-driven model has proven remarkably durable: it remains, by an enormous margin, the largest-circulation magazine in the United States. In an era when most magazines fight for survival, the magazine born as Modern Maturity in 1958 keeps arriving in tens of millions of mailboxes — six times a year, in three editions, as reliable as ever.