This volume develops a comprehensive multivariate paradigm of the process of aging, delineating the factors underlying age-related degeneration. The model is aimed at understanding the conditions under which age sets into motion a process of degeneration. Accumulating evidence suggests that age per se is not the decisive factor in age-related regression--leading scholars to distinguish between chronological and functional age. The process of degeneration is evidently due to the combined impact of deleterious biophysiological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors and the interaction among them.

Based on this evidence, Zeev Ben-Sira shows how age-related degeneration can be viewed as a product of a damaging cycle of reciprocally activating stimuli from the person's internal and external environment. Consequently, aging is conceptualized as a process of bio-psychosocial regression. The paradigm outlined in this volume identifies factors that are likely to accelerate or decelerate the process of aging.

Migration nowadays is a universal phenomenon often instigating extreme changes in the entire life cycle of the immigrants. Occasionally, immigration is liable to impose a certain degree of change also on the life of the absorbing society at large or of substantial sectors of it. Professor Ben-Sira, a world figure in medical sociology, advances the understanding of the factors that promote or impede readjustment of immigrants and of members of the absorbing society who may feel affected by that immigration. The author surveyed 500 new immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, as well as 900 members of the absorbing society in order to understand the process of immigration and integration. This book not only contributes to the understanding of the factors explaining readjustment in the wake of immigration, but also provides insights with respect to the relationship between life-change and stress.