3. A comparative biodemographic perspective of health and aging
withing social contexts
To advance our understanding of the biodemography of aging within social
contexts, we need a unifying method linking current research in the
social determinants of individual variability to evolutionary demography
approaches to the fundamental rules of life history evolution. Here, we
provide a general roadmap for accomplishing this using rhesus macaques
living at the Cayo Santiago Biological Field Station as an example.
Although we do not provide empirical data, our model formulation is
based on realistic demographic and health phenotype metrics currently
being collected in this population. Our methods can be applied across
the entire spectrum of animal models, yet nonhuman primates provide
unique advantages to gain insights into aging due to their complex
social behavior with analogs of human health-relevant status disparities
(Phillips et al., 2014).