Distinguishing Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

Abstract

Assessing the effects of growing older has always been a central task of scholars and researchers in the academic specialties that focus on age-related phenomena. Although effects have rarely been attributed to chronological aging or the mere passage of time after birth, such age-related changes as the accumulation of experience, role changes, and biological maturation and decline have been thought to bring about changes in attitudes, values, behavior, affective states, cognitive ability, and relations with other people. A fairly typical hypothesis about attitudinal change and aging, for instance, is that accommodation and adaptation to existing social arrangements tend to make aging persons more conservative in the sense of being resistant to change (Glenn, 1974). An example of a hypothesis concerning aging and behavior is that declines in energy and risk-taking propensities associated with biological aging tend to diminish participation in conventional crime (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 1983).