Aging and The Life Course: An Introduction to Social Gerontology

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 one’s 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.

Jill Quadagno is the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair in Social Gerontology at Florida State University. She earned her B.A from Pennsylvania State University, her M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Dr. Quadagno is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Aging of the American Sociological Association, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. In 1994, she served as Senior Policy Advisor in the President's Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform. She is the author of numerous books on aging and social policy issues, and is presently serving as President of the American Sociological Society for 1997-1998.