Successful Aging such difficulties quite early in life. Most important, many people deal well with particular afflictions, while others with the same difficulties become functionally impaired. While there are diverse definitions of health, we prefer to consider health as a multidimensional continuum, rather than a dichotomy, and in terms of functional abilities and the absence of chronic disease in addition to subjective assessments of one's fitness (Antonovsky 1987). One promising corollary, and possible precursor, of health in later adulthood is social integration in the form of involvement in multiple roles. Occupying multiple roles-such as worker, club member, and churchgoer-has been positively linked to health and to longevity (Berkman and Breslow 1983; House, Landis, and Umberson 1988; Moen, Dempster-McClain, and Williams 1989). Such multiple-role occupancy may be especially important in later adulthood, a time when role reduction, rather than role accumulation, becomes increasingly common in our culture (Morgan 1988). However, cross-sectional research linking health with social integration, defined as "the existence or quantity of social ties or relationships," is problematic because the direction of effects is unclear (House, Umberson, and Landis 1988, p. 302). As Verbrugge (1983) points out, the issue is one of social causation versus social selection. Social causation assumes that social integration (occupying multiple roles) influences health.2 By contrast, social selection assumes that healthy people are the ones most likely to take on and maintain multiple social roles. But the social causation versus social selection argument is less crucial than an understanding of the pathways to health and social integration in later adulthood. Causation and selection are probably both operating simultaneously and interactively in a dynamic cascade of events over the life course. Successful aging probably encompasses both social integration (multiple roles) and health in the later years of life. What is required is a dynamic approach to health and social integration, to examine the extent to which experiences throughout the life course shape physical abilities and involvement in multiple roles later in life (e.g., Riley and Riley 1989; Rowe and Kahn 1987). Such an approach is especially important when looking at women's lives, since women's social integration into the larger society has been circumscribed by the primacy of their family obligations (Hughes and Gove 1981). Women are also more likely than men to spend their later adulthood alone, without the presence (and support) of a spouse. Aging women are particularly susceptible to social isolation as they leave or lose