Is Successful Aging 2.0 the Way for the Future?

In 2015, and to great fanfare within the U.S. flagship gerontology journals, John Rowe and Robert Kahn (2015) published their update to Successful Aging (SA), “Successful aging 2.0: Conceptual Expansions for the 21^st Century.” While their original formation has proven popular, a small number of scholars have critiqued SA itself for its individual focus, neoliberalism, neglect of social inequalities, and implicit ageism.

The goal of this presentation is to review these critiques, and then explore the extent to which SA 2.0 addresses these. I find that although Rowe and Kahn mention social factors, these remain at the individual level in discussion. Such status characteristics as gender remain at the level of personal characteristics. Of note, social inequalities continue to be neglected, including those based on age, with the result that ageism is also not addressed. Indeed, they reproduce the (unfounded) intergenerational conflict perspective in their essay, and their discussion of the life course is based on a white, middle-class, male standard. While some critiques of the previous model have argued for an expansion to include more voices, I conclude by advocating that the time has come for scholars and practitioners to stop using the SA framework, and instead think about diverse modes of aging.