Interest in the study of vulnerability has experienced impressive growth across various disciplines. To contribute to this major but scattered development in the study of vulnerability, this article argues for a multidisciplinary life-course framework. This framework promotes a systemic and dynamic perspective focused on three complementary research directions: multidimensional, multilevel, and multidirectional. On the basis of this life course perspective, the authors also propose a definition of vulnerability as a dynamic process of stress and resources across various domains of life (i.e., work, family, health, migration, etc.), levels (i.e., person, group, collective), and time (i.e., long-term processes). VULNERABILITY AS AN EMERGING CONCEPT IN THE SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCESA consultation of Google Scholar shows that the term vulnerability used to appear infrequently in scientific publications until the mid-1980s, beginning to grow in popularity throughout the 1990s, until the drastically expansion of its use since the year 2000. Originally conceptualized in natural disasters studies, vulnerability was successfully introduced into human development research only in recent years, notably in the psychological and social sciences. Hanappi, Bernardi, and Spini (2015) documented the unique position of vulnerability across disciplinary fields through a content analysis of more than 10,000 articles published since 2000 based on a search including the keywords life course and vulnerability or synonyms. A multiple correspondence analysis of this material revealed two main structural dimensions. The first result concerns disciplines, showing that there is a deep divide between psychology and the social sciences (i.e., sociology, demography). This axis crosses another axis where interdisciplinary fields centered on specific life stages may be found, from youth studies to gerontology. The second major result is that vulnerability is a central concept close to resilience, which we can consider its twin concept (Overton, 2013). Stress and depression are the most commonly used keywords in psychology. In sociology, poverty is a central concept. In youth studies and publications on adulthood, risk and insecurity are the most commonly used terms, and frailty is a key concept of gerontology. This second axis structuring recent work on vulnerability is concerned with vulnerability at specific life stages. Vulnerability is often used in connection with childhood and youth (Berzin, 2010;Frankenberg, Robinson, & Delahooke, 2000) and in relation to old age in association with concepts such as senescence or frailty (Fried et al., 2001). This recent success of vulnerability is an illustration of a central principle in life-course research: historical changes affect the macro-micro linkages between social contexts and individuals (Elder, 1995). Indeed, ongoing social evolutions are classically contrasted with the decades that followed the Second World War when industrial societies reached an apex. Life-course specialists of th...

In many parts of Western Europe the age at first marriage and the level of celibacy declined in the second half of the 19th century. This weakening of the European marriage pattern (EMP) can be interpreted as a “classic” response to the increase of the standard of living, but a more far‐reaching interpretation is that the erosion of the EMP was part of a cultural shift characterized by the rise of a new, less instrumental and more egalitarian view on marriage and partner selection. The latter vision implies the increase of the preference for a same age marriage. We test this explanation by using a combined Belgian‐Dutch data set of marriage certificates (N = 766,412). Our findings corroborate the “cultural shift thesis.”

Background: One of the fundamental challenges for gerontological research is how to maintain and promote intact cognitive functioning in old age. Previous research revealed that high educational level, good health status, and an active lifestyle during adulthood seem to be protective against cognitive impairment in old age. However, up to now, a detailed examination of the interaction of these relations based on a broader variety of activities and considering past and current activities is missing. Objective: The present study set out to extend the literature by investigating in more detail the interactions of educational level and health status with a broad variety of past and current leisure activities in their association with cognitive functioning in a large sample of older adults with a wide age range. Methods: A total of 2,812 older adults (aged 65-101 years) served as the sample for the present study. A test on verbal abilities and one on processing speed were applied. In addition, individuals were retrospectively interviewed regarding their educational level, current general health status, and 18 leisure activities (in terms of currently performed activities and those that had been carried out at the age of 45 years). Results: Regressions indicated that engaging in more current activities and in more activities at the age of 45 years (both analyzed as an overall activity measure) was related to better cognitive performance in old age (r values up to 0.39, p values <0.001). These associations were more pronounced in individuals with a low (compared to a high) educational level. Conclusion: Present results suggest that an active lifestyle during middle adulthood may be related to better cognitive functioning in old age, particularly in individuals with a low educational level. These findings are discussed with respect to models of cognitive aging.

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