This groundbreaking text is the first to take a life course perspective, examining the relationship between the quality of one's life in old age and ones experiences, earlier choices, opportunities, and constraints. The text gives students a broad background for understanding current policy debates through a distinctive chapter entitled "Old Age and the Welfare State" (Chapter 11) and through boxed essays in every chapter called "An Issue for Public Policy."

Each chapter also includes a box called "In Their Own Words" that allows older people to describe their own experiences. In addition, coverage of race, class, gender, and culture is integrated throughout and featured in the "Diversity in the Aging Experience" sections.

Aging and the Life Course is a comprehensive interdisciplinary text in social gerontology. It provides students with a firm grounding in methodological and theoretical issues associated with aging and examines changes in social roles, relationships and the biological and psychological process that occur as people grow older.

It also considers all major life transitions including retirement, widowhood, grandparenting, and changes in living arrangements. In addition, this text considers the economic and political issues that influence the context in which people grow old.

Although the primary focus is on the U.S., considerable material on aging worldwide is included. Unique features include four featured boxes, a life course perspective and an emphasis on inequality by race, ethnicity and gender.