Longitudinal and Life Course Studies最新文献

The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are still working through health systems worldwide, and further reflections about the nature of health and disease, and about how to design and implement effective public health interventions are much needed. For numerous diseases and conditions, as well as for COVID-19, our knowledge base is rich. We know a lot about the biology of the disease, and we have plenty of statistics that relate health to socio-economic factors. In this paper, we argue that we need to add a third dimension to this knowledge base, namely a thorough description of the lifeworld of health and disease, in terms of the mixed biosocial mechanisms that operate in it. We present the concepts of lifeworld and of mixed mechanisms, and then illustrate how they can be operationalised and measured through mixed methodologies that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches. Finally, we explain the complementarity of our approach with the biological and statistical dimensions of health and disease for the design of public health interventions.

Previous studies have shown that highly educated women are more likely to realise their fertility aspirations, or experience a faster progression to a higher order birth, compared to lower educated women. This is often explained by improved economic or social resources among the higher educated. However, it is unclear whether educational differences in health behaviours may also contribute to these differential fertility outcomes. In this study, we use data from Waves 1-7 of the UK Longitudinal Household Study, combined with data from the Nurse Health Assessment from Wave 2 to estimate couples' likelihood of experiencing additional childbirth within six years. A discrete-time event history model is employed to analyse the transition to a higher order birth, while accounting for both partners' level of education as well as smoking patterns and body mass index. We find that couples in which the female partner is highly educated are more likely to experience childbirth within six years compared to others. In addition, female smoking is negatively associated with the likelihood of childbirth, while no significant effect has been found for male health factors. Female health indicators explain some of the variation in fertility outcomes for women with lower secondary education compared to degree-educated women. However, education remains a significant predictor of the transition to higher order births, also after accounting for male and female health indicators. It is therefore important to consider both socio-economic and health factors in order to understand variations in fertility outcomes.

This study focuses on the constitution of financial reserves in Switzerland from a longitudinal perspective. Personal income after retirement derives from financial reserves whose constitution depends both on positional factors, such as sex and birth cohorts, and processual factors, such as occupational trajectories, in the institutional context of the Swiss pension system (structural factors). We hypothesise that some processual, positional and structural factors interact with each other to shape financial reserves available in old age. We assess this set of factors and their interactions using the occupational trajectory types stemming from optimal matching analysis (OMA) combined with the hierarchical clustering and regression tree methods. We used the retrospective biographic data SHARELIFE gathered during the third wave of the SHARE survey in 2009. The results show that occupational trajectories are influential factors accounting for much of the financial reserves available in later life. However, these processual factors interact with positional factors such as sex and birth cohort. The retirement schemes generalised in Switzerland during the period under consideration add up to the effect of positional factors on the constitution of financial reserves.

Aim: To review research developments on childhood adversity in the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) since 2001.

Method: Narrative overview of the published work of the CHDS since 2001 in the context of research methods.

Results: The CHDS research has continued to evolve as the cohort has aged. A clear focus has remained on the measurement of outcomes associated with psychosocial risk factors over the life course. This focus has allowed the CHDS to examine the linkages between exposure to adversity in childhood and later mental health, psychosocial and occupational outcomes across the life span to middle adulthood. The CHDS has many strengths, including prospective measurement of a broad and deep set of constructs, the use of multiple informants for data, and a range of statistical approaches suited to repeated measures longitudinal data. The CHDS has pioneered new approaches to the study of human development over the lifespan, which has been instrumental in investigating childhood adversity.

Conclusion: The CHDS continues to provide unique information from a population cohort that has been studied for more than four decades. Future research will include examination of factors that mitigate the effects of childhood adversity and enhance resilience.

Objective: To assess the impact of age 15 fertility intentions on childbearing outcomes three decades later.

Background: Evidence is mixed about the implications of teenage fertility intentions on later childbearing. Taking a prospective life course approach to assessing intentions and outcomes may help clarify these mixed findings.

Method: A general population birth cohort (born 1972/73) was asked about their fertility intentions at age 15 and 775 of this sample (384 women, 391 men) provided data on their childbearing between ages 15 and 45.

Results: At age 15, almost all of the sample indicated they would like to have children in the future (93%). Most (79%) reported having had a biological child by they time they were 45; but those who professed to not wanting children as teenagers were significantly less likely to have had a child three decades later.

Conclusion: Fertility intentions during adolescence are probably influenced by social, political and economic norms and may influence later childbearing decisions. This may be particularly true for those whose intentions counter established norms around childbearing.

Implications: A life course framework is useful for examining the relationship between hypothetical fertility intentions and outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unexpected disruptions to Western countries which affected women more adversely than men. Previous studies suggest that gender differences are attributable to: women being over-represented in the most affected sectors of the economy, women's labour market disadvantage as compared to their partners, and mothers taking a bigger share childcare responsibilities following school closures. Using the data from four British nationally representative cohort studies, we test these propositions. Our findings confirm that the adverse labour market effects were still experienced by women a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and that these effects were the most severe for women who lived with a partner and children, even if they worked in critical occupations. We show that adjusting for pre-pandemic job characteristics attenuates the gaps, suggesting that women were over-represented in jobs disproportionately affected by COVID-19 pandemic. However, the remaining gaps are not further attenuated by adjusting for the partner's job and children characteristics, suggesting that the adversities experienced by women were not driven by their relative labour market position, as compared to their partners or childcare responsibilities. The residual gender differences observed in the rates of active, paid work and furlough for those who live with partner and children point to the importance of unobserved factors such as social norms, preferences, or discrimination. These effects may be long-lasting and jeopardise women's longer-term position through the loss of experience, leading to reinforcement of gender inequalities or even reversal of the progress towards gender equality.

A household's financial satisfaction is one of the most significant factors driving subjective well-being. However, Poland ranks close to the lowest position, 22nd out of the 28 EU members, in self-reported financial status. The paper investigates the problem of determining patterns of Polish households' behaviour and shows the evolution of the subjective assessment of financial situation based on the eight waves of the Polish Household panel data. The analysis is carried out on the basis of latent Markov (LM) models, which allow for socio-economic features affecting the parameters of the latent process. We compare different types of LM models considering: (1) different numbers of latent structures; (2) different types of the latent process constraints; (3) socio-economic background characteristics; and (4) survey weights (being excluded in most of the empirical analyses). The final model identifies three latent states, specifies common initial and transition probabilities over a 15-year period and, as a result, enables us to better characterise the families likely to change their position, especially families reporting worsening in their financial situation. To show the main direction of self-reporting financial condition, we present the predicted path for respondents characterised by the selected socio-economic features, relying on algorithm maximising posterior probabilities of the selected LM model.