UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

"Successful" into Old Age? Conceptualisation and Empirical Evidence of Ageing Concepts for the Oldest Old

Ms Plugge deals with various aspects of "successful" ageing processes. Due to increasing life expectancy, demographic change shows an increasingly older society in which the number of the oldest old will continue to grow strongly in the future. Due to demographic ageing, it is relevant to examine to what extent ageing from the 9th decade of life upwards can be shaped "successfully" and which prerequisites are necessary for this.

The extent to which the population ages successfully into old age has hardly been researched. Rather, current research on successful ageing refers to the over-65s, i.e. concepts of successful ageing have not yet been empirically tested for the oldest old and have not been adequately adapted in terms of content and methodology. Limitations in ageing models are often a lack of consideration of subjective definitions of successful ageing of older people themselves and too strong a focus on one-sided objective criteria such as chronic diseases.

Empirical analyses using a representative data set of the oldest old in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW80+, N=1,863) will contribute for the first time to providing an overview of "successful" ageing in Germany using logistic and linear regression models. Furthermore, the longitudinal data (NRW80+, W₁ & W₂) will be used to map the development of the criteria of successful ageing and to examine the influence of changing life situations on successful ageing. Subsequently, the role of the educational gradient for successful ageing will be examined in more detail. In addition to the empirical analyses, the goal is the normatively critical reconceptualisation of successful ageing of the oldest old with additions from the CHAPO model (The Challenges and Potentials Model of Quality of Life). This model depicts quality of life as a complex construct holistically and on the basis of subjectively assessed and objectively recorded criteria as well as with consideration of an environment-person continuum.