Contrary to the predominant approach in the epidemiology of ageing of investigating risk factors to identify people who have increased risks of negative health trajectories, this project will investigate the reasons for why some people who are supposed to be at risk for ill-health do not become ill. The aim of this project is: to identify which groups of older adults have aged successfully, despite having been exposed to exceptional socioeconomic adversity and to identify the mechanisms that explain their success. Exceptional socioeconomic adversity is the central risk exposure in this project because it is among the most fundamental causes of suffering currently known. It is measured with father?s and own education level in older indigenous Dutch adults and with being a first-generation Turkish or Moroccan migrant. The project investigates who among the groups that have been exposed to socioeconomic adversity has aged relatively successfully. Successful ageing shall be measured with core indicators of multiple domains of functioning: physical, mental, cognitive and social. The project departs from the following theses: 1) If one has attained relatively good physical, mental, cognitive and social functioning as compared to one?s age peers, one has aged successfully; 2) If one has aged successfully, despite having lived in socioeconomic hardship, one is resilient. Through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research methods, characteristics of resilient individuals shall be identified. Respondents are obtained from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA), which is primed to address a broad array of social, cognitive, mental and physical aspects of ageing. Two hypothesised mechanisms of resilience shall be considered: 1) resilient older adults have on average less accumulated risk throughout the lifecourse than the non-resilient older adults, and 2) specific protective factors in resilient older adults buffer against the consequences of living in socioeconomic hardship. The proposed study shall be performed by the applicant and two PhD students. It provides the applicant with the unique opportunity to merge his social scientific and epidemiological backgrounds into a unique scientific approach of the study of ageing.