ABSTRACT
Any discussion on healthy aging must be anchored in an understanding of its related construct, successful aging (e.g., Kendig & Browning, 2010). Research on successful aging suggests that there are at least three types of approaches to this construct. The first one can be traced to Rowe and Kahn’s (1987) attempt to define successful aging by proposing what the state of successful aging entails. They define successful aging as low probability of disease and disability, high cognitive and physical functional capacity, and active engagement with life. Successful aging research, which aims to identify the conditions necessary to age well and which focuses on the objective measurement of successful aging, has grown over the past few years and has proposed further measures of this state, such as sustained personal autonomy and well-being. Thus, although this is a highly debated construct, Rowe and Kahn’s definition (as problematic as it might be) is acknowledged to have had a positive effect on the study of aging and old age because it argued that aging and disease were two different things and it encouraged a shift in focus from people doing poorly to people doing well.
