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Editor, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences
You will note that the lead article in this issue is a theory paper focusing on the life course. In this article, Dale Dannefer traces the origins of the concepts of cumulative advantage and disadvantage and identifies several promising directions for further research in gerontology. I would encourage you to read it.
The theory paper, however, is only one sign of a renewed interest in the life course in social gerontology. In the September issue, Ken Ferraro and Jessica Kelley-Moore review a half century of longitudinal methods in social gerontology as evidence of change in this journal. They find that research using longitudinal studies has appeared more and more frequently. One reason for this trend is that, over the past two decades, major funding agencies, including the National Institute on Aging, have invested more and more heavily in large national longitudinal studies and have been generous in funding projects analyzing those data. These data sets have made it possible for us to think in fresh ways about the processes of aging, and changes over the life course, the questions whose answers beg for longitudinal data.
The National Institute on Aging seeks small grant (R03) applications to produce pilot studies (for R01 applications) in a number of important areas. Priority number 24 involves improved measures and methodologies. To quote directly from the regulations, "measures of cumulative social, psychological, and cultural advantage or adversity are ... sought." When people say that theory is not important to research, think again. It is basic. That is, it is the basis of basic research. The fact that theory and research on life-course issues are emerging simultaneously says something positive about the maturation of our field of study.
The section of the American Sociological Association most attractive to social gerontologists began its life as the "Section on Aging." In struggling with its identity over its first decade, and because of the good-natured prodding of Matilda White Riley, it came to understand and then to embrace a new name: the "Section on Aging and the Life Course."
Finally, I would call your attention to the theme of the 2003 program of The Gerontological Society of America when it meets in San Diego later this month: "Our Future Selves: Research, Education, and Services for Early Development and Childhood in an Aging Society." George Martin, MD, president of the Society, writes, "I want our meeting to explore how events during early development and childhood can set the stage for varying patterns of aging during the later phases of the life span. These events can be genetic, environmental, or stochastic." In that statement, I hear echoes of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. The program theme is just one more bit of evidence that the life course is an important way of looking at aging, in theory, in research, and in the interplay between theory and research. Why are we suddenly interested in the life course? Aging and the life course have always been inseparable. More of us, however, are now coming to appreciate the connection.
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