7077HSV Development Across The Lifespan Essay Sample

7077HSV Development Across the Lifespan Essay

Assignment Brief

Title: Critical Analysis Reading

Task Description:

Purpose

The purpose of this assessment is to promote your engagement with some of the literature regarding lifespan development and to promote your capacity to critically analyse an article.

Description

Critical analysis the reading at the bottom of the Readings List by using first person tense and Critical Analysis Essay format.

Be mindful of:

The “challenge”of writing in an essay format with only 1500 words

Using at least ten contemporary and relevant peer-reviewed journal sources as references to assist you in critiquing

Ensuring you are consistent with an academic writing style - even though you are able to use First Person tense within this task

Using APA7 reference formatting

Using the marking criteria below to structure the format of your essay - to ensure you meet each of the requirements.

1. Essay is written in First Person

2. Essay is written using a Critical Analysis format.

3. Minimum of 10 peer reviewed journal articles

4. Health Writing and Referencing APA7 is used.

Solution

Introduction

This essay presents a critical discussion of Understanding Unequal Ageing Towards a Synthesis of Intersectionality and Life Course Analyses with regard to its theoretical innovations, empirical limitations, and policy implications. According to the authors, there is a need to integrate intersectionality-the study of identities such as race, gender, and class-with life course analysis on the shaping of historical and biographical time in one's aging process.

Methodologically, the article does not fulfil the criteria of empirical validation because the theories are posited without any background in longitudinal or comparative data, a point of contention when observing intersectional health research (e.g., Hankivsky, 2021) that base their theory on mixed-methods evidence (Ram et al., 2024). The policy critiques, while sharp, would benefit from linking with grassroots alternatives to neoliberal ageing policies, especially those grounded in marginalized communities. Ten contemporary sources inform me in arguing that a transnational, decolonial, and community-centered perspective should be incorporated into future work as a way to cement intersectional life course analysis. Only then will this analytical framework account for the structural causes of inequalities in ageing and hence be able to inform transformative policy interventions (Holman & Walker, 2020).

Summary of the Article

Appropriate application of both intersectionality and life course approaches to aging provides an excellent understanding of inequality in later life by showing how overlapping social identities and systemic disadvantages accumulate over time. I appreciate this view since it extends beyond single-axis analyses into multi-level policy interventions meant to remedy the situation. I do notice, however, that one of the biggest drawbacks of this model, emphasizing cumulative disadvantage, is that economies do not cost macro-level structural forces such as colonialism or global capitalism or geopolitical inequities. I think these macro systems are heavily involved at the other end-they usually operate across national borders-in shaping disparities in aging with respect to the access to resources, health, and social protections across different areas and populations (Mouskaj, 2024). This understanding of these forces leaves the framework at risk of ignoring some of the most potent causes of unequal aging in the global landscape. In my opinion, this understanding would further complement the model around its explanation, especially in postcolonial and economically marginal contexts.

Strengths of the Article

In my opinion, one of the article's major strengths is the innovative theoretical integration it undertakes. By merging intersectionality and life course theories, the authors make an argument against reductionistic approaches to aging research. I find their example compelling: A Black woman has an aging trajectory across her lifetime shaped uniquely by racialized sexism, unlike a white woman, a position strengthened by Ferraro et al. (2021), whose study reveals health declines among aging Black women that are compounded. I also like how contaminated disadvantages fit contemporary gerontology by showing how discrimination in early life has poorer health effects in later life(Bixby, 2024). This further underscores the importance of considering aging as an intergenerational process defined by intersecting oppressions. Still, I would propose that the framework could have gone further by explicitly discussing for MBA assignment expert how structural forces such as colonialism and global capitalism might intensify these inequalities through time.

Another strength of the authors' theory synthesis is its emphasis on policy relevance since it critiques the universality of welfare models that cannot accommodate intersectional forms of oppression. Such criticism further opens up the way for targeted, intersectional interference in thinking about how blanket social programs do not cater to all the multiple disadvantages, even such as from low-income women of color or disabled LGBTQ+ elders, because their needs are shaped by various systems of exclusion (Zheng & Walsham, 2021). This corresponds to the analysis of the aging issue under neoliberalism by Estes (2022), which discusses how austerity, privatism, and cuts to social services aggravate inequalities so that already vulnerable groups would be further deprived of support.

Indeed, this is that it was able to adjoin experiences narrated at localized microlevels and failures typified by macrolevel policies, by showing systemic inequities taking the long life of people. For example, it is the rise of both racial wealth gap and gendered caregiving burden and the accumulated, discriminatory access to health care, which sharply contrasts later well-being in life due to life-time investments. The intersectional design of policy which the authors envisioned-including culturally competent elder care, reparative economic policies, and anti-discriminatory housing policies-gives future directions on equitable ageing (Weaver and Lockyer, 2024). Besides, future research could explore the ways grassroots and community movements resist neoliberal retrenchment, paving alternative pathways to intersectional justice in ageing policy. Such policies would be remedial in addressing the structures of historical cumulative disadvantage for the disadvantaged voices of elders (Yaussy, 2022).

Limitations and Critiques

Apart from their merits, this article has certain constraints also. First, the authors no doubt stress the intersectionalities in their framework but they do not emphasize structural forces like capitalism or colonialism that create hierarchies in aging. Instead, they hardly ever talk about how the global economic systems press older migrants towards precarious labor (Torres, 2021). This, therefore, becomes an open divide which weakens the systemic critique: second, their Western cases do not take into account cultural differences of aging (Tinner et al., 2023). Instead, as Lamb (2023) noted, collectivist societies often counteract the aging inequities under focus in the article through the support of families as opposed to individualized Western contexts.

While theoretically cogent in its interplay between intersectionality and life course analysis, the article's methodological shortcomings diminish its empirical grounding. Their synthesis remained largely theoretical and did not employ any longitudinal or comparative data to produce concrete examples of how intersecting identities shape aging trajectories in the real world. For example, absent the systematic longitudinal study of cohorts racially and economically diverse-tracking how structural barriers-to which these persons are arguably subjected-compound across different life stages, the article's primary hypotheses about cumulative disadvantage must remain speculative (Slowey, 2022). This is in contrast to works like Hankivsky's intersectional health research, where theory is strengthened by the mixed-methods data, including the integration of quantitative surveys and qualitative narratives to show how oppression operates across institutional and individual levels.

Alternative Perspectives

I think the article would have had a stronger theoretical underpinning had it engaged with such critiques of intersectionality. For example, Bhattacharya (2022) says in her Marxist argument that intersectionality often tends to declassify and break realism into competing identity-based skirmishes rather than recognizing that class cuts across ideologies in an individual case. While I find something valuable in this sort of overlapping intersectionality, I think this critique raises questions about whether this framework has been appropriately attuned to systemic economic exploitation. However, there is a boundary to life course studies with which this is bound in individual life histories because they could be overlooked the broader generation-wide calamities-like the pension crashes of whole aged cohorts (Mouskaj, 2024). Through this synergism of the two theories, the authors are advancing a more living view of aging inequalities. I opine that more successful would have been their synergetics had they directly tackled these critiques-particularly around class primacy and structural generational shocks. Without this engagement, their framework risks reproducing some of the very blind spots it seeks to overcome.

The theoretical synthesis of the article, however, remains bound and restricted to West-oriented framework because it has not incorporated Indigenous and non-Western epistemologies of aging that radically offer different understandings of later life. According to the majority of Indigenous communities, as Scholars such as Simpson (2020) emphasize, aging is not a solitary trajectory going through identity oppression but a matter of collective, spiritual, and land affiliation. They revere elders as knowledge keepers and the well-being of these elders is tied to the health of the community, environmental stewardship, and intergenerational continuity, all of which are absent in the authors' intersectional life course model (Hale et al., 2022).

This exclusion automatically renders the manuscript to repeat the universalism for which it is critiqued. The framework under consideration points out cumulative disadvantages but is silent on the mode by which colonialism interferes with Indigenous aging via dispossession of land, cultural erasure, and forced assimilation. Such systemic harms require different analytical and policy approaches (Gutterman, 2021). Truly, pluralistic understandings should be brought into the synthesis, as only this can guarantee inequality in aging theories as mirroring diversities of global lived experiences (Bixby, 2024).

Conclusion and Implications

In conclusion, the article makes a significant contribution by merging intersectionality and life course theory, offering a valuable lens for studying unequal ageing. However, its limited engagement with structural power, cultural diversity, and empirical evidence reveals gaps that future research must address. I suggest three directions: (1) comparative studies across geopolitical contexts, (2) explicit analysis of capitalism/colonialism in ageing disparities, and (3) participatory methods centering marginalized elders’ voices. By addressing these gaps, scholars can build on the article’s foundation to create a more transformative framework for equitable ageing policies.  

References

Bixby, L. E. (2024). Intersectional Inequalities: How Socioeconomic Well-being Varies at the Intersection of Disability, Gender, Race-Ethnicity, and Age. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 91, 100938–100938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2024.100938

Gutterman, A. (2021). Ageism and Intersectionality: Older Persons as Members of Other Vulnerable Groups. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3972842

Hale, J. M., Schneider, D. C., Mehta, N. K., & Myrskylä, M. (2022). Understanding cognitive impairment in the U.S. through the lenses of intersectionality and (un)conditional cumulative (dis)advantage. St-Andrews.ac.uk. https://doi.org/282877657

Holman, D., & Walker, A. (2020). Understanding unequal ageing: towards a synthesis of intersectionality and life course analyses. European Journal of Ageing, 18(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-020-00582-7

Mouskaj, Y. (2024). Operationalizing Intersectionality in Greek Welfare Policies: Addressing Systemic Marginalization of Disabled, Migrant, and Aging Populations : A Critical Examination of Social Exclusion and Policy Reform under Austerity. DIVA. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1917286

Ram, H., Goli, S., M. Sripriya Reddy, & Anu Rammohan. (2024). Food Insecurity Among Older Adults in India: A Study of Disparities Across the Inter-sectional Axes of Caste, Poverty, and Gender. Journal of Economics Race and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41996-024-00145-3

Slowey, M. (2022). Intersectionality: Implications for Research in the Field of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning. Springer EBooks, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_5-1

Tinner, L., Holman, D., Ejegi-Memeh, S., & Laverty, A. A. (2023). Use of Intersectionality Theory in Interventional Health Research in High-Income Countries: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(14), 6370–6370. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20146370

Weaver, S., & Lockyer, S. (2024). Intersectionality and the Construction of Humour in Contemporary Stand-up Comedy. European Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494241294156

Yaussy, S. (2022). Intersectionality and the Interpretation of Past Pandemics. Bioarchaeology International, 6(1-2). https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2020.0028

Zheng, Y., & Walsham, G. (2021). Inequality of what? An intersectional approach to digital inequality under Covid-19. Information and Organization, 31(1), 100341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100341