Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences

aging.

Preface

Kenneth F. Ferraro and Deborah Carr

Robert Binstock and Ethel Shanas edited the first edition of the Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences in 1976, and we are fortunate to offer the ninth edition. During the past 45 years, social science scholarship on aging has flourished. The establishment of pre- and postdoctoral training programs in the scientific study of aging, the creation of major longitudinal studies of aging worldwide, and the proliferation of journals dedicated to the study of aging have created an unprecedented stock of knowledge about the social context of aging. Given the burgeoning literature about aging processes and populations, also including monographs and anthologies, there remains a compelling need for a definitive scholarly work to make sense of this vast inventory of articles, chapters, and books. The purpose of the Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences is to be that definitive work for social gerontologists.

Following the footsteps of prior editors, we believe the Handbook is more than an inventory of the recent literature. It helps scholars, whether established or emerging, to make sense of these vast (and occasionally conflicting) literatures by identifying major contributions to, controversies in, and limitations of our knowledge on a topic. The assembled authors for the ninth edition, however, have gone a step further by also specifying fruitful avenues to advance the literature in meaningful ways. The chapters clearly emphasize recent literatures while also selectively delineating meaningful connections to classic works in the field.

The study of aging is not the exclusive province of a single academic discipline, and the Handbook has played a critical role of highlighting breakthrough discoveries in how social, cultural, economic, biological, and political forces shape aging processes as well as how population aging acts back on those elements of social life. Somewhat distinct from its companion publications the Handbook of the Biology of Aging and the Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, this Handbook is designed to consider contributions from multiple disciplines. Thus we recruited eminent authors from a wide array of social sciences. Contributors represent disciplines including but not limited to sociology, demography, economics, politics, gerontology, medicine, nursing, public health, social work, and media and information studies. Other contributors represent centers, research institutes, studies, or agencies, ranging from the Gateway to Global Aging program to the US Federal Reserve Bank.

Through nine editions, the editors have prioritized fresh reviews and approaches. In this edition, we feature topics which did not appear in any of the prior editions. Examples of new topics include sexuality and technologies of aging (Chapter 10: Sexuality in Later Life and Chapter 23: Technologies and Aging: Understanding Use, Impacts, and Future Needs, respectively). On the other hand, we feature core topics that have appeared in prior editions of the Handbook yet include innovative perspectives bolstered by cutting-edge data and methods. Examples include the socioeconomic gradient in health and political participation (Chapter 6: Educational Attainment and Adult Health and Chapter 18: Aging and Politics: Age Differences in Political Behavior in Comparative Perspective, respectively).

The volume is organized in four parts: I. Scientific approaches and methods; II. Structural constraints and adaptation; III. Social institutions; and IV. Aging and social intervention.

We were greatly aided by three Associate Editors in developing the ninth edition: Vicki Freedman, Ellen Idler, and Janet Wilmoth. The Associate Editors were very helpful by identifying both emerging topics for this volume and distinguished scholars to write chapters. The Associate Editors also were involved in reviewing the chapters to help authors ensure the most up-to-date coverage, develop or clarify themes, and sharpen conclusions. We are deeply grateful for their very careful and constructive reviews. Finally, Janet Wilmoth and Ellen Idler also contributed chapters on military service and religion (Chapter 12: The Role of the Military in Women’s Lives and Chapter 16: Religion and Aging in the Global Context of Secularization: Patterns, Processes, Consequences, respectively).

We also express our gratitude to Linda K. George, who served as coeditor of six prior editions of the Handbook. Linda communicated the vision for the Handbook as well as helpful operational details. For instance, our commitment to fresh reviews means that we rarely return to the same author on the same topic in successive editions. The approach is inclusive and typically integrates a nice mix of authors from different nations, further enhancing the global reach of this volume.

The social scientific study of aging is a vibrant field of inquiry and motivated by much more than just population aging. We hope that this Handbook serves the community of social science scholars as an essential resource for breakthrough discoveries on aging and informs policy development to optimize the process of growing older.

Part I

Scientific Approaches and Methods

Outline

Chapter 1 Frontiers of social science research on aging

Chapter 2 Ethnographic methods for research on aging: making use of a fundamental toolkit for understanding everyday life

Chapter 3 Measuring life course events and life histories

Chapter 4 Genomic data measures and methods: a primer for social scientists

Chapter 1

Frontiers of social science research on aging

Kenneth F. Ferraro,    Center on Aging and the Life Course and Department of Sociology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

Abstract

Social scientists have made breakthrough discoveries on aging to address critical issues confronting older adults. This chapter highlights some of the frontiers of social science research on aging that have spawned the discoveries, and identifies how research on intersecting frontiers aids both the development of a gerontological imagination across disciplines and contributions within disciplines.

Keywords

Life course analysis; theories of aging; biomarkers; scientific innovation; gerontological imagination

Outline

Outline

Overview of social science frontiers for research on aging 4

Vistas on the frontiers 5

Life course analysis 5

Social connectedness and isolation in later life 6

Integrating biomarkers into social science research on aging 8

Context for adaptation in adulthood 9

Intersecting frontiers 10

Conclusion 12

References 12

Scores of social science frontiers for the study of aging spawn intellectual excitement, controversy, and policy questions. Some frontiers represent entering relatively unexplored or unoccupied areas. For instance, new social arrangements or conditions spark scientific exploration and systematic inquiry to gain insight into why the new social arrangement or condition has arisen and how it might influence the aging process. Contemporary examples include older adults’ use of electronic technologies (ranging from home sensors to online dating sites), a neighbors-helping-neighbors model of community life for older adults, and cohort differentiation in response to the Western Diet. Social change generates new topics for scientific exploration and systematic investigation.

Second, there are frontiers in territories that have been explored previously, but the science has changed so much that we are able to see more than our predecessors did in what are now familiar environs. Parallel to the excitement of an archeological discovery in a previously studied region, social scientists have new tools to open fresh vistas of discovery. For example, social scientists have long studied adult responses to stressors, but they are able to make breakthrough discoveries now by integrating biomarkers to identify specific mechanisms of stress response; they now look searchingly under the skin to see how social phenomena influence biology.

Science thrives by examining new topical areas and emergent social arrangements and by continued study of familiar topics but with new tools of inquiry. We need both so that the science of aging offers innovative, significant, and timely contributions. Moreover, it is the accumulation and integration of meaningful knowledge that advances our understanding of the profound influence of social, economic, cultural, and political forces on aging—and how population aging and human development act back on those forces.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of frontiers of the two types—emergent topic and frequently studied—and discuss selected frontiers to gain a sense of the wealth of exemplary social science research on aging. I have organized the chapter in three sections. The first section provides an overview of the two types of frontiers; the second provides a closer examination of a few frontiers; and the third considers how social science frontiers of aging can contribute to frontiers in other fields (disciplines) and foster a gerontological imagination.

Overview of social science frontiers for research on aging

To identify emergent topical areas and frequently studied topics, I examined the titles of all chapters in the nine editions of the Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, which span more than four decades (1976 to the present). Although editors identify topics and authors, the choice of topics typically reflects the prevalence of influential published works. Handbooks are to provide state-of-the art reviews of specific topics, which means that there needs to be a corpus of work to review. For some emergent topics, that body of work will be modest, but for frequently studied topics, the literature is expansive.

I examined keywords in the tables of contents for all editions and created a list of 50 terms or phrases that capture the main theme or topic for each of the 221 chapters. I subsequently coded each chapter with one of the 50 terms and its edition. I identify 10 emergent topics in Table 1.1, defined as those that first appeared in the seventh, eighth, or ninth editions (2011, 2016, and 2021, respectively).

Table 1.1

aAlphabetical order of terms first used in editions seven, eight, or nine (2011, 2016, 2021).

Most of these topics have been studied for decades, but they rose in salience among social scientists during the past decade. A clarion example is disasters and our response to them, especially given current concerns about climate change. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and volcano eruptions are a part of Earth’s history, but today’s electronic technology enables billions of people to be aware of such tragedies within moments of their occurrence. Thus news stories and images of the plight of older people facing disasters, especially in hospitals and nursing homes, have fueled public concern and scientific interest (Henderson, Roberto, & Kamo, 2010; Prohaska & Peters, 2019). Parallel arguments can be made about the abuse of older adults and nutrition. Public policy debate and mass media cycling of controversy stimulate both governmental responses and scientific research.

Other emergent areas such as biodemography represent how scientific frontiers can be an offshoot of a frontier with a rich history of inquiry. Biodemography is a relatively nascent branch of demography focused on the integration of biomeasures into population science. Owing to the greater integration of biological and social science data, genetics also is attracting more interest among social scientists. Social scientists may have long been interested in sexual behavior and function, but very few studies gathered such information until fairly recently. With the inclusion of measures of sexuality in major surveys such as the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), there is a much deeper literature on sexuality in later life (see Chapter 10, Sexuality in Later Life).

To complement the review of emergent topics, I also examined the most prevalent topics in the nine editions of the Handbook. In Table 1.2, I list the top quintile of topic frequency. Of the 50 topics investigated, only three appear in all editions: health services, politics, and work and retirement. There also are clear connections to disciplines (economics, political science) and the study of health (both epidemiology and health services). The underlying theme of inequality via the categories of stratification and race, ethnicity, and diversity has been featured prominently over nine editions of the Handbook. These recurrent topics represent core, foundational issues in the social science of aging. The terrain is familiar, but the approach evolves with scientific advances.

Table 1.2

aAlphabetical order of most prevalent terms (top quintile) appearing in nine editions.

The second quintile of the 50, not shown, includes topics such as generations, life course, and death and dying that first appeared in 1976 and appear in the majority of the nine edition, albeit intermittently. Others such as law and leisure appeared in early but not in recent editions. Gender, by contrast, did not appear until the fourth edition but has appeared regularly since then.

As one scans the table of contents for this edition of the Handbook, one observes both familiar and emergent topics. Some familiar topics merit review to organize and synthesize recent discoveries. At the same time, handbooks often draw attention to emergent areas as a call for research on aspects of aging.

Vistas on the frontiers

In this section, I identify four frontiers that merit special mention because they are attracting vigorous attention by social scientists and are positioned to sustain that momentum. This articulation is by no means exhaustive, but it is illustrative due to the scientific significance of and innovation on these frontiers.

Life course analysis

The life course is one such frontier that is increasingly core to social science research on aging. The terms life course or cohort appeared in chapter titles for six of the nine editions of the Handbook, and there is fresh energy to use life course thinking to conduct analyses on aging and senescence.

There are many legitimate ways to use the term life course, such as to describe a perspective (George, 2013), a lens (Ferraro, 2016), or a theory (Elder, 1998). Each of these uses is meaningful to specify a viewpoint on human aging, but life course analysis conveys a sense of action based on the viewpoint—to investigate or examine. Not only has the viewpoint gained great currency in recent decades, but life course analysis has advanced rapidly. Scholars are conducting research to probe facets of human lives in context, the dynamics of growing older, and continuity and discontinuity over large swaths of human development and aging. The advance is due to many factors, especially cutting-edge scholarship to apply the viewpoint, but also to the availability of exceptional longitudinal data arrays and statistical techniques to illuminate the lives of those studied. Moreover, the rich analyses of human lives to which we are now accustomed lead to new articulations of the viewpoint and theories that emphasize studying human lives in context. The viewpoint spurs analyses, and those analyses act back on the viewpoint.

It has been argued that we are in the midst of a golden age of life-course studies (Ferraro & Schafer, 2017, p. 88). I realize that others have offered parallel observations: data on the life course are overwhelming in their abundance and their diversity. Although apropos for today, Leonard Cain made that pronouncement nearly six decades ago (Cain, 1964). By today’s standards, it is easy to challenge his claim, but the point is that we have witnessed a revolution in life course studies moving from the study of age differences in phenomena to rich longitudinal data enabling the estimation of age changes and cohort differentiation. Most of the early longitudinal studies also were based on samples restricted by geography and social characteristics. Today, however, we are witnessing more inclusive and comprehensive studies of the life course enabling analyses that seemed out of reach a few decades ago. British and Finnish studies have truly remarkable life course data spanning birth to death (Wadsworth, Kuh, Richards, & Hardy, 2006; Järvelin et al., 2004, respectively). Although it will be some time until we see comparable datasets in other nations, a growing number of longitudinal studies are opening new vistas for life course analysis.

The contemporary scientific standard does not require data from all phases of human lives in each study, but most scholars expect life course analysis to include a conceptualization of the totality of the life span and a sensitivity to how social change alters prior views of the life course (Moen, 2016). Life course scholars also give priority to evidence from longitudinal data, which reflects individual and social change and may enable investigators to identify tensions between structure and agency. Many scholars regard longitudinal data as repeated measures on respondents, but social science studies of aging have long made effective use of repeated cross-sectional data to assess cohort change and/or social change. The overarching motivation is to make time a variable so that we investigate aging in the context of both historical and biological time. Analyses explicating the processes that accelerate or decelerate biological aging contribute to our understanding of biography, history, and the relationship between the two (Riley, 1987). There also are stronger efforts to compile cross-national data on the life course; longitudinal data in comparative perspective provide remarkable opportunities for breakthrough discoveries.

Creative data linkages with surveys are another way in which this frontier is advancing social scientific studies of aging. Whether to medical records, health expenditures, or elements of geographic areas, linking survey data often helps contextualize life course analysis in meaningful ways. Such linkages also are an explicit bridge to macro- and meso-level phenomena—a vehicle to move beyond the exclusive reliance on studies of individual aging. Although most studies are logically designed to link contemporaneous data such as neighborhood characteristics to survey respondents, there also are thoughtful linkages to historical data. For instance, if one is interested in the relationship between education and health, linking older subjects to school records or community characteristics decades earlier may be more appropriate. For more detail on such linkages, see Chapter 6, Educational Attainment and Adult Health, by Montez and Brooks.

A logical extension of creative data linkages is the emerging field of big data analytics. Leading scholars in the field of geroscience emphasize an appreciation for multisystem phenomena (Fried & Ferrucci, 2016, p. 49) and set the stage for analyses of aging that incorporate big data. Drawing from complex systems models, investigators are using troves of medical records and/or national surveys such as National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to identify biomarkers of aging in order to reduce mortality risk (Fedichev, 2018).

In the first edition of this Handbook, Neugarten and Hagestad (1976) argued that the life course is usually viewed as a progression of orderly changes from infancy through old age, with both biological and sociocultural timetables governing the sequences of change (p. 36). Their specification of biological and sociocultural timetables and sequences of change was prescient for what we are seeing in life course research today, including social sequence analysis (Cornwell, 2015), but the claim of orderly changes is provocative. Many social changes, most notably the women’s movement and the increase in longevity during the past half century, have created new social arrangements that challenge the taken-for-granted assertion of orderly change in human lives (Moen, 2016). Disordered cohort flow, economic recession, and war shape many human choices, from fertility to retirement saving, generating unanticipated (nonorderly) changes (e.g., Canham et al., 2016; Easterlin, 1987; Wilkinson, 2016). Pandemics, such as COVID-19, generate a cascade of nonorderly changes.

Rather than an exclusive focus on the problems of aging, which was common as gerontology emerged as a field of study (Achenbaum, 1995), social scientists pushed in recent decades for viewing aging in the context of the entirety of one’s life. The result is that we are witnessing an exciting frontier of examining human experience, from embryo to death or splicing together periods of human lives, to better understand the temporal and contextual factors that influence growing older (Ferraro, 2018). In the process, we are reaping remarkable evidence of continuity and discontinuity in human lives related to aging, cohort differentiation, and social change.

Social connectedness and isolation in later life

Although there is a long and rich history of scientific research on age and social connectedness, three factors renewed interest in studying this frontier. First, the field of network science has grown considerably during the past two decades. Network science draws from scholarship in many disciplines including, but not limited to, sociology, computer science, informatics, statistics, and the emergent field of data science. The popularity of social media also helped laypersons see the structure and influence of social networks in everyday interactions.

Second, as electronic communication has flourished, scholars are intrigued by the consequences of such tethering via smartphones, global positioning systems, and social media (see Chapter 23, Technologies and Aging: Understanding Use, Impacts, and Future Needs, by Cotten). The electronic connections abound, and social scientists are drawn to study them for a variety of reasons, most notably the effect of those connections on the fabric of social order. Are electronic communications a reasonable proxy for face-to-face communication? Will these new forms of connection confer the same health benefits observed from other means of social interaction? Will older adults who are less tech savvy—and probably less tech motivated—be left behind in the revolution toward continuous connectivity?

Third, there is intense interest in social isolation, especially during later life. Although this topic has been studied for decades (e.g., Lowenthal & Robinson, 1976), social isolation among older people has become a salient concern for both scholars and policy makers. Using the National Health and Aging Trends Study, Cudjoe et al. (2020) estimate that 4.6% of older Americans manifest severe social isolation, and another 21.1% manifest social isolation. Similarly, Hawthorne (2008) reported that 4.8% of older Australians felt either isolated or very isolated. Using the ELSA, Steptoe, Shankar, Demakakos, and Wardle (2013) report that 18.9% of older people residing in England express a high level of social isolation. In 2018 the United Kingdom named a Minister for Loneliness, and various foundations have launched calls to action (e.g., Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness).

Although the prevalence of isolation among older people is a serious concern, it is less clear how much this prevalence has changed in recent decades. One US national survey reported that the percent of adults who could not name a single confidant more than doubled between 1985 and 2004 (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006), but Fischer (2009) considers the abrupt change implausible and perhaps an artifact of differences in question order for the two surveys. A longitudinal survey of rural Canada reported that the percent of older people who reported isolation rose from 36% to 64% over a 20-year follow-up period, but the shift was due largely to an increase in moderate isolation (Wenger & Burholt, 2004). The percent of older people reporting that they were very isolated was fairly stable and actually declined slightly among survivors. Longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) reveal that although most older adults report losing at least one confidant during a 5-year period, they also added a new one during that observation window (Cornwell, Goldman, & Laumann, 2020; Cornwell & Laumann, 2015; Cornwell, Schumm, Laumann, Kim, & Kim, 2014).

The renewed interest in social networks addresses both familiar and emergent research questions. A familiar question is whether social connections are salubrious. Scores of studies demonstrate that meaningful social connections during adulthood and later life, especially social support, are health protective, but that recurrent negative interactions in social relationships harm health (Cohen, 2004; Ross, Rook, Winczewski, Collins, & Schetter, 2019). The outcomes studied are varied, ranging from cognitive functioning (Ellwardt, van Tilburg, & Aartsen, 2015) and cardiovascular health (Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996) to mortality (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015). The effect sizes of social connections on health are nontrivial—sometimes substantial—and manifest at various levels of analysis. Some studies probe whether social capital influences health (Klinenberg, 2002; Moore & Kawachi, 2017) while others examine the power of meaningful dyadic relationships such as those found in strong marriages to protect health (Lawrence, Rogers, Zajacova, & Wadsworth, 2019) or aid recovery after illness episodes (Idler, Boulifard, & Contrada, 2012). An important concern in this literature is causal ordering, and there is a need for longitudinal studies to distinguish the salubrious character of social networks from stress-activated coping (whereby people offer more support to those with serious health problems).

Another familiar question hinges on the distinction between social isolation and loneliness. All too often, the lines of distinction are blurred or the two concepts are studied separately. Contemporary scholarship on the topic examines social isolation as the objective characteristics of social relationships (e.g., size, density, tie strength) while loneliness represents the negative feelings one has in those relationships (e.g., lack of trust, support, or companionship, feelings of neglect) (Cornwell & Waite, 2009). This distinction makes it very clear that some people may be isolated but not lonely and vice versa. Indeed, Newall and Menec (2019) specify four groups of older adults: (1) isolated, but not lonely; (2) lonely in a crowd (or lonely while integrated); (3) both isolated and lonely; and (4) neither isolated nor lonely. This typology was alluded to decades ago, when social gerontologists were debunking disengagement theory for its characterization of isolated older people as presumptively lonely and having low morale because of their shrunken social life space (Hochschild, 1975). Nonetheless, research continues on the conditions by which older people become isolated and/or lonely, in hopes of identifying those aspects of social relationships that provide the resources during times of environmental challenge and enable people to adapt in meaningful ways. At least one longitudinal analysis of US data shows that loneliness has not increased over the past decade (Hawkley, Wroblewski, Kaiser, Luhmann, & Schumm, 2019).

Against this backdrop of familiar research questions, we know relatively little about whether the new forms of electronic interaction are related to health. We are learning why older adults use social media—and their reasons to not use it (Jung, Walden, Johnson, & Sundar, 2017). We also have learned that older adults who use information and communication technology are less likely to report being lonely, but there is a digital divide by age—the oldest adults are less likely to use such technology (Schlomann, Seifert, Zank, Woopen, & Rietz, 2020). Still we know very little about potential physical health benefits from these actions during everyday life. This is a propitious avenue for future research. Do the electronic modalities of interaction used by older people confer parallel health benefits? If yes for today’s cohorts of older people, can that conclusion be sustained for more recent cohorts who will have decades of lifetime experience in texting, remote audiovisual meetings, and social media?

Although we know relatively little about the utility of electronic interactions for protecting health among community-dwelling older adults, medical care services are embracing the wholesale use of electronic technologies, especially to older adults in long-term care. Many health care providers view telemedicine and electronic monitoring as effective ways to assess patients’ well-being and reduce potential complications of care. Health care delivery systems view electronic monitoring and just in time information as an efficient (cost-saving) way to use the available data to enhance service provision, but the results have been mixed (Gaugler et al., 2019; Pillemer et al., 2012). Some of these services are challenging for family caregivers because of extensive demands for data entry. The other major tradeoff for more data and connectivity is that social interactions evolve into high tech but low touch social relationships. There is an urgent need to study the use of electronic interactions with older people, both among community-dwelling adults and those receiving long-term care who may be electronically connected but lonely.

Integrating biomarkers into social science research on aging

Social scientists have been studying biological phenomena for decades in subfields such as medical sociology, health economics, and biopolitics, but the actual integration of biomarkers (or bioindicators) into social science research has been relatively rare until the 21st century (National Research Council, Committee on Population, Finch, Vaupel, & Kinsella, 2001). Granted, there were earlier studies of clinical samples that integrated biomarkers, but the shift to incorporate biomarkers into probability samples of community-dwelling persons is fairly recent and remarkable. This has invigorated many social scientists to meaningfully integrate biological processes into specific research projects and further develop theories and models to advance inquiry across disciplines.

The NHANES was a trailblazer in the United States, but it is limited to mostly repeated cross sections with one-time biomarker measurement. By merging repeated cross sections, however, investigators can assess cohort changes in biomarkers over time. The NHANES biospecimen program is extensive and includes collection of serum, plasma, urine, and stored DNA specimens and genetic data.

Many longitudinal (panel) studies collect biomarkers on probability samples of community-dwelling adults, although some biomarker collections are limited to a subsample. Studies with repeated (two or more) measures of biomarkers include: Health and Retirement Study (and parallel studies in other nations, e.g., China); NSHAP; Social Environment and Biomarkers of Aging Study (Taiwan); Costa Rican Longevity and Healthy Aging Study; and the British National Survey of Health and Development, also known as the 1946 birth cohort study (see also Crimmins & Vasunilashorn, 2016; Ruiz, Benzeval, & Kumari, 2017). In addition, multiple longitudinal studies integrate a biomarker at one point in time (e.g., The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, National Health and Aging Trends Study), and some of those studies are in the midst of collecting data for future analyses of repeated biomarker measurement (e.g., Midlife in the United States Survey). As social and behavioral sciences move to incorporate more biomarkers, many longitudinal surveys seek to add them.

The range of biomarkers assessed is considerable. Beyond anthropometrics and blood pressure captured via an examination, scores of biomarkers have been assessed via venous blood or dried blood spots, saliva, urine, and stool (Crimmins & Vasunilashorn, 2016; Herd et al., 2018). Some investigators gather information on lipids to assess cardiovascular and metabolic risk; others gather HbA1c and/or plasma glucose for studies of metabolic risk and diabetes. Cortisol and epinephrine are assessed to study stress response, and C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 are used to estimate the level of chronic inflammation. The candidate biomarkers are extensive, but scholars are cautious of black box epidemiology that lacks a theoretical basis for biomarkers as indicative of specific etiologic mechanisms.

Telomeres have long been a coveted biomarker among scholars studying aging, even referred to as the Holy Grail of gerontologists (Harley, 1991). Telomere shortening that follows each round of replication, due in part to insufficient expression of the enzyme telomerase, is viewed as a sign of cumulative genetic damage. As the chromosomal caps that protect DNA shrink, cellular disorganization and senescence occur more quickly (Baxter et al., 2004).

Despite the assertion that telomere length is an ideal measure of biological age, recent inconsistent findings challenge that claim. For instance, studies of the effect of stressors and lifetime adversity on telomeres yield mixed results; some studies reveal shorter telomeres among persons exposed to such stressors (Kananen et al., 2010; Kemp & Ferraro, 2020; Puterman et al., 2016), but others do not observe such a relationship (Jodczyk, Fergusson, Horwood, Pearson, & Kennedy, 2014; Verhoeven, van Oppen, Puterman, Elzinga, & Penninx, 2015). A recent meta-analysis concluded that early life adversity is associated with shorter telomeres, but that effect sizes correlate with the measurement of the early adversity. Studies with fairly limited measures of early adversity generally yield small to medium effect sizes, but studies using more comprehensive measures of early adversity were more likely to observe stronger relationships with telomere length (Ridout et al., 2018).

Other studies conclude that telomere length may not be a useful clinical marker of functional aging in an older adult population because it adds little to predictions of functioning based on age alone (Brown, Zhang, Mitchell, & Ailshire, 2018, p. 1626). Adding to the intrigue, one US study found that non-Hispanic Black adults have longer telomeres than their White counterparts, despite generally higher levels of adverse events across the life course (Puterman et al., 2016). Other scholars caution against the exclusive attention to telomere length as a marker of biological age, citing evidence that telomere dysfunction is independent of length (Fumagalli et al., 2012; Victorelli & Passos, 2017).

Biomarkers are powerful additions to the craft of social science research, but further study of each biomarker and sets of biomarkers may reveal that none is the Holy Grail gerontologists sought decades ago. Nevertheless, biomarkers enable social scientists to conduct life course analysis in ways that heretofore were considered beyond the reach of social science. Rather than seek a biomarker of aging per se, perhaps it would be better to focus on biomarkers for specific biological processes such as the development of chronic inflammation in later life: inflamm-aging (Franceschi et al., 2000; Fulop et al., 2018).

Context for adaptation in adulthood

Social scientists prioritize studying lives in context, but one could argue that there has been greater attention to temporal context in the study of aging than to environmental context. Social scientists have enthusiastically embraced studying life course events, cohort effects, and trajectories over time, but there has not been commensurate attention to spatial arrangements and ecological influences (Andrews, Cutchin, McCracken, Phillips, & Wiles, 2007). This claim is not intended to understate the century-long contributions of studying neighborhood effects, rooted in the Chicago school of sociology (human ecology). Rather, the claim is a call for renewed integration of ecological information in the study of aging. Indeed, evidence from three axes of recent research suggests that more attention to spatial contexts will yield important scientific dividends in the study of aging.

First, there is a growing literature on how environmental context shapes the aging process. Scores of studies that link survey data to geo-matched information on physical and social attributes reveal the importance of place to influence health and aging. For instance, Ailshire and Clarke (2014) used census tracts to link a geocoded national survey (Americans’ Changing Lives) to data on air pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency. The authors found that older people living in a census tract with high concentrations of fine particulate matter (<2.5 micrometers) had an error rate on cognitive functioning tests 1.5 times higher than those living in census tracts with low levels of particulate matter. Using a similar design with the Study of Assets and Health Dynamics among the Oldest Old, Aneshensel et al. (2007), found that depressive symptoms vary across census tracts even after accounting for individual-level characteristics, suggesting the importance of population composition within places.

Second, health disparities are manifest via spatial contexts. Whether one is interested in racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic disparities, it is clear that there is environmental clustering of inequality across geographical units (Carr, 2019). Especially for the study of racial and ethnic disparities, several studies show that neighborhood characteristics such as racial minority concentration and economic disadvantage heighten disease risk and generally reduce the individual-level differences in outcomes such as functional limitations (Wilkinson, Ferraro, & Kemp, 2017), self-rated health (Cagney, Browning, & Wen, 2005), and cancer onset (Freedman, Grafova, & Rogowski, 2011).

Spatial variability is often an underrecognized source of inequality. For instance, although many scholars and laypersons anticipate a modest rise in life expectancy in modern societies, Dwyer-Lindgren et al. (2017) showed substantial geographic disparities in life expectancy across US counties—and that some counties experienced an increase in life expectancy while other counties experienced a decrease during recent decades. Many of the counties that experienced a decline in life expectancy were located in economically depressed areas in Appalachia (especially eastern Kentucky) and Oklahoma—locations that also have higher than average rates of drug overdose deaths (Hedegaard, Warner, & Miniño, 2018). In viewing these types of patterns, many social scientists draw from social disorganization theories to emphasize three types of variability by place that are consequential to well-being and quality of life: economic disadvantage, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, and residential instability (Cagney & Cornwell, 2018; Sampson, 2012). Integrating spatial context may help identify some of the reasons for inequality, especially if one can link to geocodes for smaller locales (i.e., census tracts or blocks) than states or counties.

Third, although some interventions work best at the national or state level, others may work optimally in local areas. If innovations are effective at the local level, then one can scale up for larger areas. For example, the Beacon Hill Village began in a section of Boston, with older adults helping other older adults in the neighborhood with tasks ranging from transportation to home maintenance. In addition, many Beacon Hill older residents engaged in exchanges with younger neighbors, including child supervision (see Chapter 21, Innovations for Aging in Place, by LaFave and colleagues).

Although I have emphasized the utility of smaller ecological units such as census tracts or blocks, larger units may be more appropriate for specific research questions. Nations, states, provinces, and counties are government units; therefore, policy related to those units may be optimal for specific research questions. For instance, Montez et al. (2019) use state-level data to examine the relationship between education and mortality in the United States because states have more control than the federal government over K-12 education and taxes (e.g., tobacco). In short, the research question should guide the selection of the appropriate ecological unit.

For social scientists endeavoring to use geocodes from survey data and link to spatial data, there is a rapidly accumulating set of data resources. Safeguards are understandably needed to assure anonymity of survey respondents, but there are sound approaches for linking surveys to available data while protecting the identity of respondents. Numerous geocoded resources are available from the US Census Bureau, Dartmouth Atlas, Neighborhood Atlas, and the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging. Even if geocoded data are unavailable, many surveys collect interviewer data that can be useful. For instance, additional information about place from interviewers may help scholars situate their studies of aging.

Conducting research on aging with spatial data linked to survey responses is a major step forward for social gerontology. At the same time, there are two closely related issues to ponder when doing so. First, although ecological data are more stable over time than individual-level data, the temporal linkage is important. Very few studies examine change in environmental context and individuals. Most studies that integrate the analysis of change focus on repeated measures for the individual characteristics, but a logical next step is to consider change in the environmental context.

Second, most ecological data are aggregate measures of individual characteristics, but they may not coincide precisely with how people actually view those localities. Thus there is often a difference between how people perceive an area and the aggregate measures encompassing one’s residential location and activity space (Cagney & Cornwell, 2018). As such, we need more research that integrates both the aggregate measures of neighborhood characteristics along with data on how people think of the physical spaces in which they reside and traverse.

Intersecting frontiers

A primary objective of the Handbook series is to provide state-of-the-art reviews—and critiques—of the latest discoveries in the science of aging. The three volumes, dedicated to biology, psychology, and the social sciences, have helped raise multiple generations of scholars in gerontology within those main areas. Yet one of the most vivid observations of how the social science of aging has changed during recent decades is that it increasingly integrates information from biology, psychology, and other discipline-based approaches to tackle the big problems of aging. In short, frontiers in the social sciences may intersect in some ways with frontiers in other scientific approaches.

Intersecting frontiers by social scientists with biologists, for instance, may be a propitious development for biology because a growing number of nonbiologists are reading, citing, and appropriating theories and findings from biology to advance scientific inquiry on aging. At the same time, a growing number of investigative teams comprising scholars from multiple disciplines likely leads to some reciprocity of perspective and methods for the field of gerontology. Moreover, collaboration across disciplines may help to clarify central premises upon which gerontologists function and facilitate meaningful conversation about varied strategies to explore the frontiers. Social scientists make distinctive contributions to such research by integrating deeper understanding of social structures and processes as well as theories and methods appropriate for rich data arrays.

Although scientific professions operate with considerable autonomy from outsiders, there may be ways that intersecting frontiers could benefit the science of aging in the respective disciplines as well as the development of gerontology itself. Despite well-intentioned efforts to distinguish disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary approaches to research on aging, perhaps the focus should be on the integration of knowledge across disciplines. It may matter less in which departments scholars work—and professional the identities they prioritize—than the intellectual integration scholars embrace in their investigations.

One way to assess such intellectual integration is by identifying how research links to core concepts in the field, regardless of who does the work. By intersecting frontiers, I do not refer solely to investigative niches situated in closely related topics; rather, intersecting frontiers are overarching themes or empirical generalizations held by gerontologists across various disciplines. To foster thinking beyond the disciplines, Ferraro (2018) identified six axioms of the gerontological imagination—integrative elements of research on aging that are consistent with the core concepts in the various disciplines studying aging. The six axioms depicted in Fig. 1.1 refer to a paradigm for how gerontologist think regardless of their disciplinary background or specialization. Within the hexagon are examples of core scientific fields from which the axioms were deduced and to which integrative knowledge is contributed.

Figure 1.1 The gerontological imagination as intersecting frontiers for research on aging.

Although attention to causality is vital for all scientific inquiry, most gerontologists have a healthy skepticism of purported age effects (Ferraro, 2018, p. 31). Gerontologists are cautious of claims that aging is a cause of observed declines in function, instead exploring alternative causal explanations such as cohort effects, selection (e.g., terminal decline), or behavior.

Moving clockwise around the hexagon, I earlier identified how the frontier of life course analysis has penetrated the core of gerontology and ushered in a golden age of longitudinal studies to address how and why we age in context. A new generation of social scientists now learns the theories and methods for how to study the aging process, not just the products of senescence.

From Nathan Shock’s specification that aging is a dynamic equilibrium (Baker & Achenbaum, 1992, p. 262) to Baltes and Willis’ depiction of aging as a multidirectional change process (1977, p. 135), there is compelling evidence that scientists view aging as multifaceted due to relationships between systems, gene–environment interactions, trade-offs, or compensatory processes (Ferraro, 2018, p. 73). Instead of studying aging largely because of the prevalence of age-related diseases or expectations of universal decline, gerontologists are eager to see research on exceptions to those expectations and strategies to help people optimize their experience with the challenges of growing older. As some scholars observe, this view of aging calls for more attention to healthy longevity: health extension should supplant life extension as the primary goal of medicine and public health (Olshansky & Carnes, 2019, p. S7). Gerontologists do not deny decline in function as people grow older; they study it. Yet, they also are intrigued by instances of multidirectional change because they may hold the secret for how to develop interventions to reduce declines in function.

Heterogeneity is another concept that serves as an intersecting frontier for gerontology. The concept has been core to gerontology for decades (Maddox, 1987), but continues to garner attention via the application of multilevel growth curves revealing that intraindividual variability on some outcomes increases as people grow older (Lin & Kelley-Moore, 2017). Rather than view intraindividual variability over time as simply error, we can learn much about the heterogeneity of the aging process by studying those residuals. Scholars of aging are notably cautious about mean values (averages); instead, they are attentive to variance in trajectories of growing older.

Whether investigating wealth, cognitive reserve, or inflammation, hundreds of social gerontologists examine accumulation processes. In lieu of studying aging as a presumed cause of later life changes, we need investigations of how theoretically informed entities accumulate to shape quality of later life. The study of aging requires systematic attention to accumulation processes, including characteristics of the object amassed, timing of accumulation, de-accumulation, thresholds, and nonlinear relationships between relevant variables (Ferraro, 2018, p. 112). For many outcomes of interest, we need more precise information about the dose, duration, and timing of the exposure studied.

Finally, ageism is core to how social scientists think about aging, but it is somewhat surprising how little research has been done by social scientists to explicate how ageism or age discrimination may affect health and function in later life (Shippee, Wilkinson, Schafer, & Shippee, 2019). Most of us consider ageism pernicious, but ageism among scientists also can limit the scope of what is considered legitimate inquiry—and not just in the social sciences. Indeed, this idea was recently recognized by an esteemed team of scholars in the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences: the role of ageism in structuring biological questions has so far passed largely unnoticed (Cohen, Levasseur, Raina, Fried, & Fülöp, 2019, p. 2).

Ageism is closely related to other axioms of the gerontological imagination. By viewing the axioms as a gestalt, it is clear that ageism ignores or trivializes the heterogeneity of older adults, which may lead one to presume that aging is a global and universal cause of senescence. Alternatively, failure to recognize the heterogeneity of older adults paves the way for ageism to flourish, both in everyday life and in the laboratory. Life course analysis on the development of ageism and its consequences may help identify critical pathways for how negative images of aging compromise older adults’ health and well-being.

The gerontological imagination is an integrative paradigm of aging. It is both a way of thinking about aging and a tool for guiding research and communicating findings to a wider audience. Articulating the connections between one’s specific research inquiry and one or more of the six elements should enable scholars from other fields to recognize familiar themes and controversies in the science of aging. As such, the gerontological imagination is a starting point for integrative research projects with great promise for breakthrough discoveries.

Conclusion

Social science research on aging has made remarkable progress during the past half century. The establishment of several national longitudinal studies focused on aging and their public availability via archives have created a more inclusive community of scholars and more replicable findings. Social scientific research on aging also has evolved from a field that relied predominantly on cross-sectional data to one where longitudinal analyses are commonplace. With greater integration of biomarkers and ecological data, the transformation of social science research on aging is indeed remarkable but unfinished. Too many lives are cut short or compromised by avoidable risks, and it is incumbent on social scientists to deliver research findings that reduce those risks and enhance quality of life.

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