The Life Course and Aging: Challenges, Lessons, and New Directions*

Life-course ideas focus on the changing contexts of lives and their consequences for human development and aging. The organizing concepts of the life course, as a theoretical orientation, include trajectories and transitions. Five principles of the life course make contributions to the contextual study of human development and aging. They are the principle of human development and aging as lifelong processes, the principle of human agency in situations that vary in constraints and options, the principle of historical time and place, the principle of timing in lives and the principle of linked lives. The incorporation of people and social structures in life-course models establishes the potential for loose coupling between the age-graded life course and lives as lived by individuals. Contemporary life-course studies suggest a number of promising methods for future studies of human development and aging in context.