Remarkable Survivors: Insights into Successful Aging among Women

Defines the ingredients to "successful" aging among older women by exploring the largely invisible aspects of their world. Based on the increasingly accepted theory that more qualitative studies of individuals and communities can enrich the understandings based on aggregate statistics, this study uses open-ended interview techniques to allow women to speak about what successful aging means to them, and how aspects of the social system in the United States affect the quality of their lives. The author assesses the impact of change on 1,049 American women ages 66-77, and reinterviewed 83 percent of those who were still living almost a decade later, in 1987. Quantitative data on this sample of women are complemented by a qualitative examination of 20 of these same women interviewed for a third time, in 1988. The author suggests guidelines for communities and policymakers on how to increase the quality of life for elderly women-methods of intervention that may also reduce the social and economic costs of premature dependency among the elderly, both for the elderly themselves and for their caretakers.