Understanding unequal ageing: towards a synthesis of intersectionality and life course analyses

Area of Science:

• Social Epidemiology
• Gerontology
• Health Disparities Research

Background:

• Intersectionality highlights how multiple social characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) lead to compounded discrimination.
• Existing health inequalities research often overlooks the simultaneous influence of multiple social identities.
• Gerontology has largely failed to integrate intersectional frameworks, limiting understanding of aging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To synthesize intersectionality with a life course perspective for novel insights into unequal aging and health.
• To explore how combining these frameworks can illuminate complex health disparities.
• To bridge the gap between intersectionality research and gerontology.

Main Methods:

• Review of intersectionality in inequality research, focusing on subgroups, discrimination, and heterogeneity.
• Examination of two statistical approaches: interaction terms in conventional models and multilevel models.
• Conceptual integration with life course concepts: roles, stages, transitions, cumulative advantage/disadvantage, and trajectories.

Main Results:

• Intersectionality research offers methods to analyze granular subgroup differences and individual heterogeneity.
• Life course perspective provides concepts to understand aging as a dynamic process influenced by cumulative factors.
• Synergies between these perspectives can reveal nuanced patterns of unequal aging and health.

Conclusions:

• The integration of intersectionality and life course perspectives holds significant potential for advancing research on unequal aging.
• This synthesis can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the social determinants of health across the lifespan.
• Novel insights into health inequalities can be generated by applying combined intersectional and life course approaches to aging studies.