Health, Families, and Work in Later Life: A Review of Current Research and Perspectives

There is a rapid growth in published knowledge about different aspects of age and aging. While this is highly welcome, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up even with the main insights provided by this literature. Our review thus aims to provide a compact overview of current social science research in three major domains of older people’s life: health, families, and work. Moreover, we briefly discuss some theoretical issues and introduce the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The research findings discussed here demonstrate both the challenges and opportunities lying ahead of us as life expectancy is increasing steadily and as the proportion of older people in our societies will grow further. More generally, we find a great value of life course and cross-nationally comparative perspectives in aging research. We conclude with an outlook on perspectives for future studies in this field.