ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with examples from social life, considering how increased longevity affords options in the social structure for persons who are growing older and adds to the diverse stores of accumulated experience. In social life, the increases in longevity, together with other major social changes, are permeating and literally transforming many familiar social structures, their social meanings, and their influence over people's lives. Women, whose longer and more complex lives give greater opportunity for role transitions, seem on the average to weather them better than men. Longevity operates throughout social life to prolong time spent in roles, to generate varied role sequences, and to create complexes of roles for simultaneous occupancy. The chapter discusses the influence of these options and this accumulated experience on the multifaceted processes of aging from birth to death, including biological aging. It provides information on some possibilities for future structural change, as foreshadowed by the innovative women of half a century ago.
