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Aging Well.

Category: Book chapters

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Balderas-Cejudo M.A., Patterson I., Leeson G.W. (2019) Aging Well. In: Gu D., Dupre M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham

Aging well and successful aging have been used concomitantly in the research literature and are regarded as similar concepts. However, “successful aging” has been more commonly used by older adults to describe the ingredients for “aging well” or “aging positively” (Fernández-Ballesteros et al. 2010). In fact, there have been a variety of terms used to describe older people who are “aging well,” and it is as an umbrella term that overlaps different concepts that include “active” aging (Havinghurst 1961), “productive”/“positive” aging (Bowling 1993), and/or “healthy” aging (Vaillant 2002) and has been the subject of increasing public and research interest since the 1970s. During this time there has been no real consensus about finding an acceptable definition of aging well even though there has been a plethora of studies published on this topic. One of the basic definitions of successful aging was by Palmore (1995) in the Encyclopedia of Aging who defined it as survival (longevity), health (lack of disability), and life satisfaction (happiness). Over the years we have seen the development of different models of aging well which include the ecological, biomedical, and sociopsychological models.

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