Advances in Life Course Research最新文献

Background

In this longitudinal study on Danes born 1980–2000, the objectives were to identify and describe trajectories of childhood poverty and explore their association with trajectories of contacts with the healthcare system.

Methods

Children born in Denmark from 1980–2000 were linked to national registers. Parental disposable income information was obtained for each year of the child’s life from 0–16 years. Group-based trajectory modeling was used to identify trajectories of childhood poverty. The outcome was trajectories of contacts with the healthcare system identified with group-based multi-trajectory modeling. The associations between childhood poverty trajectories and trajectories of contacts with the healthcare system were estimated using multinomial logistic regression.

Results

Four distinct groups of childhood poverty trajectories were identified. The largest group (87 %) had very low probability of childhood poverty, and the smallest group (2 %) had high probability of persistent poverty throughout childhood. Two groups experienced either early (5 %) or late (6 %) poverty in childhood. Early and late childhood poverty were associated with higher odds of being in the psychiatric use group in both sexes, and with higher odds of being in the low use and high use groups in women. Persistent poverty was associated with higher odds of being in the low use group and lower odds of being in the high use group and the psychiatric use group in both sexes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, childhood poverty is associated with healthcare contacts in adolescence and early adulthood in Denmark.

Transition to adulthood in low- and middle-come countries (LMIC) has increasingly been diversified and individualized. Economic development and migration are often cited as reasons for diversification but have been analytically examined interactively. To examine the complex linkages between development, migration, and transition to adulthood, we use China data to cover a decade when it has experienced rapid economic development, a large flow of rural-to-urban migration, and changes in the transition to adulthood. Applying the latent class analysis and multinomial logistic regression on the Chinese General Social Survey 2008 and 2017, we obtain three main findings. First, economic development increases the diversification of the transition to adulthood. Second, rural-to-urban migration has a greater impact on the postponement than on other pathways. Third, the joint impact of economic development and migration is not evident: the change do not differ between men and women as well as young adults of different migration experience. These findings collectively imply signs of the diversification of transition to adulthood in China, but also entail the individualization behind it.

While social networks are typically relatively stable in size over time, major changes in life circumstances can result in opportunities to acquire new friends. How young adults manage their relationships with their wider network of friends and family during such transitions is, however, not well understood. Using a prospective longitudinal design, we investigate changes in the size and composition of complete egocentric networks of two cohorts of young adults moving away from home to college. We show that, although networks grow rapidly due to an influx of new friends made at college, the social overload that would result is partially mitigated through the progressive loss of pre-transition friendships (but not family relationships). In addition, most of the new relationships are placed in the outermost, emotionally less close network layers that are less costly to maintain. In contrast, the more intimate inner layers of the network remain stable in size, with efforts being made to conserve these relationships. The overriding importance of face-to-face interaction in creating and maintaining ties (compared to digital media) results in the emotional quality of a tie being traded off against the constraints imposed by physical distance. The most reliable predictor of the proportion of original members with whom relationships were maintained post-transition was pre-transition network size, with weaker effects due to geographical proximity and personal popularity in the new social context. These findings have implications for managing transitions to a new environment at any life stage.

Exposure to exclusionary discipline has been tied to several deleterious outcomes in adulthood, including contact with the criminal legal system. While this work provides interesting insight into the long-term consequences tied to this form of school punishment, few have attempted to consider whether and how, exclusionary discipline practices, in particular, school suspension and expulsion shape mental health patterning over the life course. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we contribute to this body of literature by examining whether exposure to school suspension or expulsion shapes depressive symptom trajectories from adolescence to adulthood. Results from our mixed-effects linear growth curve models demonstrate both forms of exclusionary discipline play a significant role in depressive symptom trajectories. We find suspended and expelled youth exhibit significantly higher depressive symptoms in adolescence when compared to their counterparts with no history of suspension or expulsion. Results also show age variation in depressive symptom trajectories by history of exposure to exclusionary discipline. Specifically, results show the depressive symptoms gap between disciplined and non-disciplined youth slightly dissipates as youth age into early adulthood, but as individuals begin to transition out of this stage of the life course, the gap in depressive symptoms widens substantially. Results carry implications for how punitive disciplinary practices in schools shape mental health from adolescence to adulthood.

A well-documented trend in family demography is that young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to enter their first partnership earlier and forego marriage more often than their advantaged counterparts. Yet, limited research has explored whether there is also an association between parental background and expectations for partnership formation, which are considered important precursors of behaviours. Further, few studies have explored the potential mechanisms mediating these differences. This paper uses data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society to analyse the relationships between parental socioeconomic status and young Britons' expectations for marriage, cohabitation, and attitudes towards ideal age at marriage. Using the KHB decomposition as a mediation method, we verify whether these relationships are explained by two mechanisms measured during the young adults’ adolescence: family structure socialisation and academic socialisation. We find that marriage expectations are socially stratified in the UK. Those from the least advantaged backgrounds have significantly lower expectations for marriage than the most advantaged, but this difference does not hold for cohabitation. Those from the least advantaged backgrounds are also more uncertain about their ideal age at marriage. Academic socialisation mediates these relationships to a limited extent. Family structure socialisation mediates a greater percentage, especially living with a single parent, rather than married parents, during adolescence.