Issues associated with old age and aging increasingly come to the fore in our society. One goal of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) was to obtain comprehensive data from a representative sample of persons aged 70 to over 100 years. More than 30 scientists from the disciplines internal and geriatric medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, and economics collaborated from 1990 to 1995 in this investigation. Results of these endeavors are reviewed in this book. Chapters report both discipline–specific and multidisciplinary findings and point to social policy implications.