Longitudinal and Life Course Studies最新文献

Demonstrating 'impact' has become increasingly important in research and academia alongside growing consideration of the social effects of research and the ethical standards involved. However, there are also concerns about a preoccupation with 'impact' in academia, which may result in a narrow focus on applied research. The most common definitions of impact (for example, UK Research Excellence Framework) emphasise generating measurable change outside of academia. However, this may overlook other important endeavours, such as influencing discourse and development of theory. The implicit assumption that single research projects will trigger measurable policy change is often unrealistic. Data infrastructures are also expected to demonstrate their 'impact', yet existing definitions are levied at the individual researcher or substantive projects. Such definitions do not account for the additional assumptions required for infrastructure to be impactful, and arguably, in their current form are not fit for purpose in demonstrating the full contribution of longitudinal and life course studies to society. We argue that broader definitions of impact should be considered for longitudinal studies and data infrastructure, that account for the importance of 'influence', and recognise the many and multifaceted contributions of longitudinal and life course research. Here we aim to (1) review definitions of impact in the context of longitudinal and life course studies, using UK national cohorts as a case studies; (2) to provide a working definition appropriate for longitudinal research, that incorporates 'influence'; and (3) to consider approaches that can be utilised to track impact.

India has undergone a dynamic demographic transition resulting in relatively low fertility. In this context, one would expect that the population of childless women has recently become more heterogeneous. In particular, one would suspect a process of polarisation with a growing distinction between women who are unable to give birth and women who forgo motherhood for one reason or another. We investigate this supposed polarisation within the framework of the life course approach. We examine the childless Indian women's partnership trajectories and their associated socioeconomic profiles. Data was extracted from the fourth round (2015-2016) of the National Family Health Survey. A total of 8,997 women aged 36-49 who have not given birth by age 36 were studied. The analysis consisted of three parts: a sequence analysis, a cluster analysis, and a multinomial regression. Results confirm childlessness' polarised experience, along with a real heterogeneity of partnership trajectories. Indian childless women come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and their life courses reflect a continuum of different realities in terms of social norms and decision-making power. In particular, trajectories without any relational event or with extramarital sexual activity are observed among the most educated women, suggesting that their childlessness may be related to factors other than infertility. By describing the heterogeneity of their backgrounds and profiles, our findings challenge the uniform representation of childlessness in India. In doing so, this article participates in the expansion of research on non-parenthood in non-Western populations and highlights the contribution of the life course approach.

Introduction: Growing research on adult development recognises socioeconomically adverse neighbourhood environments as sources of stress affecting immunohaematologic function (IHF), with implications for disease. However, little is known about IHF markers in youth across diverse neighbourhoods. One marker of IHF, red blood cell distribution width (RDW), has demonstrated prognostic value for multiple diseases across the life course.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study analysed data from 771 well-child youth ages 5-21 without, and 5,385 sick-child youth with, observable pre-existing immune vulnerability seeking care at a metropolitan healthcare system in the Midwest United States. We employed linear mixed-effects models to examine RDW variation by quintile of neighbourhood socioeconomic position (SEP).

Results: Among well-child youth, the effect of lower neighbourhood SEP diminished (fourth quintile β=0.28, 95 per cent CI [-0.04, 0.60], fifth quintile β=0.16, 95 per cent CI [-0.16, 0.48]) after accounting for youths' racial identity and adjusting for covariates. Among sick-child youth, the effect of lower neighbourhood SEP remained after covariate adjustment (fourth quintile β=0.24, 95 per cent CI [0.08, 0.39], fifth quintile β=0.31, 95 per cent CI [0.16, 0.46]). Across both cohorts, Black racial identity was associated with elevated RDW (well-child cohort β=0.51, 95 per cent CI [0.30, 0.72]; sick-child cohort β=0.65, 95 per cent CI [0.55, 0.74]) after adjusting for neighbourhood SEP, age and biological sex.

Conclusion: Utilising a widely available and low-cost blood test, cellular consequences - as indexed by RDW - of early-life social-environmental adversity may be observable during childhood itself. The vulnerability of youth racialised as Black likely reflects socially produced health inequalities, and study findings evidence a cellular dimension of how structural factors may impact health from a young age.

Recent research shows that high parental socioeconomic status does not convey the same skill advantage to Black and Latinx children as to white children in the United States due to disadvantages at school for racialised and ethnicised minorities. We extend this literature by asking whether socioeconomic status moderates the association between child genotype and cognitive skills among racialised and ethnicised minorities in the United States. Hence, what we study is whether high socioeconomic status conveys an equal advantage when it comes to the relationship between genotype and cognitive skills. We use data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using molecular genetic data, we construct a polygenic index for educational attainment and test whether the association between this index and children's cognitive skills is moderated by maternal education and household income in two principal component defined ancestry groups: African ancestries (n=1,551) and Latinx ancestries (n=890). The polygenic index for educational attainment is positively associated with cognitive skills in both groups. In the African ancestries group, this association does not differ by socioeconomic status. In the Latinx ancestries group, the results are mixed. Because our samples are likely underpowered to detect genotype-socioeconomic interactions, our results should be considered suggestive until larger samples of diverse ancestries are available. Advances in genetic research have been skewed towards European ancestry populations, and the broader implication of our study is to eliminate this bias through the collection of large, diverse genotype samples and measuring their genotypes with arrays designed for multi-ancestry populations.

This study examines how work-family trajectories of households with poverty experience relate to poverty persistence across their working-age life course, using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel from 2007 to 2020 (N=1,518). Work-family trajectories are conceptualised by considering individual- and household-level explanations of poverty. Taking a life course perspective, the study explores sequences of labour market attachment, the extent of low-wage receipt and the needs-to-resource ratio in households across eight years. Methods combine multichannel sequence analysis to identify four clusters of work-family trajectories, and linear regressions to link these clusters to the cumulated length of poverty experiences and the average distance from the at-risk-of-poverty threshold across eight years. Findings reveal that most work-family trajectories among working-age households with poverty experience are dominated by low household work intensity and the presence of children, with trajectories of low-wage receipt forming less prominent patterns. Household histories of low work intensity are linked to increased poverty duration and severity. This relation is even stronger for households that simultaneously experience a high needs-to-resource ratio or frequent low-wage receipt, emphasising the interplay between these two factors and household work intensity. High household work intensity reduces poverty persistence the most, with education identified as an important contextual factor mitigating poverty persistence. Findings suggest to reduce poverty persistence by supporting higher work intensity and regular employment in households with poverty experiences by addressing what prevents individual employment, such as upskilling or reskilling along individual strengths. Such initiatives are particularly important to decrease poverty persistence in families with children.

Inflammation is a key mechanism underpinning socioeconomic inequalities in health. In adults, lower socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with higher inflammation levels. Early life is an important period for the biological embedding of the social environment, with implications for life course health trajectories. There is therefore increasing interest in the relationship between SEP and inflammation in children and adolescents. We conducted a scoping review to summarise and critically appraise existing evidence. Studies were included if they had exposures of any SEP indicator and outcomes of any inflammatory biomarker. Community and population studies were considered. Twenty-seven of 41 studies identified showed that lower SEP was associated with higher inflammation in childhood or adolescence. Associations were most evident in high-income countries. However, interpretation and translation of findings were restricted by a limited range of SEP indicators and inflammatory biomarkers, and inconsistent or arbitrary timing of exposures and outcomes. Drawing from this review, we make five recommendations for future work in this important domain. We suggest that future studies endeavour to: (1) measure structural and social conditions more comprehensively across early life; (2) use a broader range of inflammatory biomarkers and related measures; (3) investigate effects on long-term immune phenotype; (4) expand study settings globally and across more diverse population groups; and (5) leverage multidisciplinary teams of social and biological scientists to triangulate evidence. Implementation of these recommendations may facilitate an expansion of evidence that better informs specific and timely interventions to address the root causes of socioeconomic inequalities in health.

Coresidence with parents is one of the most common living arrangements for young adults, and many have returned home after first living independently. Shifting trends in home-leaving and home-returning have renewed research in this area, with a primary focus on how residential transitions are connected to other life course transitions. Fewer studies consider the geographic scope of the residential moves that drive home-leaving or home-returning transitions. The current study explores if life course events similarly predict residential transitions that start and end in the same county compared to those that start and end in different counties. Residential transitions are classified by their geographic scope using the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Multinomial regression models explore if the life course correlates of residential transitions vary by geographic scope. For most life course transitions, associations with same-county or different-county residential transitions vary primarily by a matter of degree. For others, such as parenthood and college degree attainment, links to residential transitions are in opposite directions based on the geographic scope of the residential transition. Results provide additional descriptive information on the geographic scope of the moves young adults make when they leave the parental home or return back to it. Variation in the associations between life course events and residential transitions of different geographic scope have implications for the contemporary transition to adulthood.