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503 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1989)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0503 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE On a personal note, between us we have already experienced 157 birthdays. Since we view the aging process as extending from birth to death, we felt at least partially justified in accepting the invitation from the editor of The Annals to organize a special issue on aging. Our acceptance certainly did not rest on any belief that age is a sine qua non for expertise in this complex field. Rather, it rested on the fact that we have had these many years for probing the mysteries of the life course in its various manifestations. Our first collaborative work, published in the early 1940s, was on contraceptive behavior and, along with growing numbers of scholars, we have been studying life-course processes ever since. THE SCIENTIFIC BASE FOR INTERVENTIONS At this point in our lives and in the history of our society, we are convinced that there is now an adequate scientific basis for deliberate social interventions that can bring improvements to the quality of the aging process. Indeed, in today's world we believe such interventions are indicated, because more and more people survive beyond the middle years up to the very end of the human life span. The social and behavioral sciences have been laying the groundwork for interventions at two levels. At the level of individual lives, they have demonstrated that interventions in the ways people grow older are already beginning to foster people's psychological and physiological well-being and functioning in later life. At the level of the surrounding social structure, however, it is clear that few interventions have been providing incentives or opportunities for the increasing numbers of capable older people to participate in the mainstream of social activities. In this view, interventions are needed-in public policy, in professional practice, and in everyday lives-that will enhance the quality of the aging process and ensure that the majority of older people will be a resource, not a burden, either to themselves or to society. The multifaceted nature of the scientific base and the interventions discussed here seems peculiarly well suited to the broad backgrounds and interests of readers of The Annals. Aging consists of interacting biological, social, and behavioral processes; and knowledge about aging derives from many disciplines, ranging from the political and social sciences to microbiology and neuroscience. The many types of interventions that can be used to implement this growing knowledge base present challenges to professionals, practitioners, and students in fields ranging from social work, the law, and medicine and public health to development of human resources, financial management, architecture and urban planning; to the ministry, education, and mass communication.1 These interventions also engage the efforts of business organizations, NOTE: One of the authors has written this preface in her capacity as a federal employee, and it is therefore in the public domain. 1. Here we build on earlier work, written by experts in these several fields, concerned with the well-being of older people and with the prevention or treatment of problems associated with aging. For an overview, see Matilda White Riley, John W. Riley, Jr., and Marilyn E. Johnson, eds., Aging and Society, vol. 2, Aging and the Professions (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1969). 9

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