Advances in Life Course Research最新文献

We study whether the experience of ‘employment during motherhood’ (EDM) exerts an effect on attitudes towards the welfare effects of EDM, which proxy gender norms with regards to employment. We examine unique evidence from a large, representative, and longitudinal data set that collects attitudinal data over about a decade in the United Kingdom. We draw on an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that exploits variation in local labour markets using a Bartik instrument for employment to address the potential endogeneity of EDM experience in explaining attitudes. We find that both childless women who work and mothers who do not work are more likely to agree with the statement that 'pre-school children suffer if their mothers work', which we interpret as more traditional gender values. However, this is not the case for women who work and have children. These findings suggest that motherhood confirms individuals' priors, and suggest that EDM is a value preserving rather than a value changing experience. These results suggest that the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’ in employment trajectories cannot be fully explained by a change in attitudes after giving birth.

Previous studies have largely omitted a dynamic analysis of how the transition into parenthood shapes gender differences in mental health trajectories. This study adopts a life course approach to examine how transitioning into parenthood affects men’s and women’s mental health across multiple domains over time, using large-scale panel data from the ‘UK Household Longitudinal Study’ (2009–2020). Results from fixed effects models with discrete-time trends show that: (1) women’s mental health is more largely affected by parenthood than men’s; (2) women’s overall mental health shows stable improvements following childbirth, while men’s shows mostly insignificant changes; (3) role and social functioning are largely improved among women following childbirth, but only marginally among men; (4) emotional functioning and vitality demonstrate the counteracting effects of parenthood for both genders, with increases in feeling happy but a deterioration in feeling calm and having energy, particularly during care-intensive years; (5) women show larger variations by socioeconomic characteristics than men, with women from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and working full-time experiencing smaller mental health benefits from parenthood compared to less privileged women or having lower paid work constraints. Overall, transitioning to parenthood leads to distinct changes in mental health domains with heterogeneous effects across genders and socioeconomic groups.

In Japan, differentiated gender expectations are strongly emphasized and Japanese wives shoulder the majority of the domestic work. Although previous research has examined the gendered division of paid and unpaid work in Japan, much less attention has been paid to household money management patterns among Japanese couples. Traditionally, Japanese women do the household financial organization, regardless of their employment status. Husbands transfer all of their income and other earnings to their wives and receive a monthly allowance as pocket money. We use data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), 1994–2019 waves, to construct fixed-effect models to investigate how parenthood, wife’s employment and husband’s relative income are associated with different money management systems in Japan. Our findings show that parenthood is positively associated with female money management systems, whereas in dual-earner couples, women are less likely to manage household money. The results suggest that female money management in Japan is positioned as part of the package of wife / mother / homemaker roles and is a “female” task rather than “male”. The results also show that the applicability of Western money management typologies and theoretical frameworks is limited for the Japanese context.

In this paper, we propose a sequence analysis-based method for selecting qualitative cases depending on quantitative results. Inspired by tools developed for cross-sectional analyses, we propose indicators suitable for longitudinal study of the life course in a holistic perspective and a set of corresponding analysis guidelines. Two complementary indicators are introduced, marginality and gain, that allows labeling observations according to both their typicality within their group and their illustrativeness of a given quantitative relationship. These indicators allow selecting a diversity of cases depending on their contributions to a quantitative relationship between trajectories and a covariate or a typology. The computation of the indicators is made available in the TraMineRextras R package.

The method and its advantages are illustrated through an original study of the relationships between residential trajectories in the Paris region and residential socialization during childhood. Using the Biographies et Entourage [Event history and entourage] survey and qualitative interviews conducted with a subsample of respondents, the analysis shows the contributions of the method not only to improve the understanding of statistical associations, but also to identify their limitations. Extension and generalization of the method are finally proposed to cover a wider scope of situations.

We investigate the impacts of emigration on the labor market and investment decisions of migrant-sending households in Pakistan by constructing a large individual-level dataset, using several rounds of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted between 2003 and 2014. We add to the literature by introducing a new time-varying instrumental variable to control for endogenous migration decisions, constructed as a composite of three variables that represent opportunities to work abroad: (i) the household’s number of adult males, (ii) historic diaspora rates, and (iii) deviations of nighttime light intensity from its trend in migrant-receiving countries. We find a significant shift in domestic labor market activity from lower-status employment categories (not working at all, unpaid family work and manual labor) toward higher-status activities and entrepreneurship such as self-employment and becoming an employer within migrant-sending households. We also find higher investment in property, bank deposits, agricultural land, livestock, poultry and fisheries by individuals in migrant-sending households. The results are stronger for vulnerable groups, implying that migration can be a force for good for rural development, the welfare of women, and less-educated individuals.

Building upon Bourdieusian sociology of education and Randall Collins' theory of, interaction ritual chains, this paper contributes to the literature on the biographical life course by analyzing the biographies of upwardly mobile academics, i.e. those who, escaped the “collective fate of their class.” Based on the collection of 25 unstructured, narrative interviews (life story narratives) and additional individual in-depth interviews, (repeated interviews, interviews with families, and friends), a total of 75 qualitative, interviews, I trace the main biographical metamorphoses of upwardly mobile, academics. The meticulous analysis of the narrations brings about an answer to the, question “What was the role of a social class in their biographical metamorphoses?”, The analysis of the turning points in the under-researched context of the postcommunist, semi-peripheral, and yet neoliberal academic system enables the paper to, discuss social circumstances which play a crucial role in this kind of upward mobility, e.g. early discovered talent, presence of books at home, choice of high school, early contact with the legitimized culture, opportunity structure of the higher education system under transition and transnational experience.

While it is commonly understood that familism is influenced by religiosity, less is known about how religiosity between young adulthood and midlife is related to the trajectory of familism from midlife over the later life course. In this study, we identified a multidimensional typology of religiosity among baby boomers in young adulthood and midlife, explored how membership in this religious typology changed from young adulthood to midlife, and examined how transition patterns of religiosity were associated with familism over time. We used data from a sample of 471 baby boomers (mean age 19 years in 1971) from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), Wave-1 (1971) through Wave-8 (2005). Using latent class and latent transition analysis, we identified three latent religiosity classes in Wave-1 (1971) and Wave-3 (1988): strongly religious, weakly religious, and privately religious, and identified nine transition patterns of religiosity from you between these waves from young adulthood to midlife. Using latent growth curve analysis (Wave-3 to Wave-8), we found that respondents who remained strongly or privately religious or whose religiosity increased had higher initial levels of familism (Wave-3) compared to those who stayed in the weakly religious class. However, the gap in familism across religiosity transition patterns decreased over time up to late middle age. Our findings indicate that while religiosity was positively associated with familism, its impact weakened over time possibly due to change in the centrality of family life and societal factors.

Covid-19 lockdowns in many countries were characterised by increases in unpaid labour (e.g. home-schooling), as well as changing working conditions (e.g. remote work). Consequently, a large body of research assesses changes in dual earner couples’ gender division of unpaid labour. However, despite the increasingly detailed picture of households’ division of labour before and after the onset of the pandemic, it remains unclear how dual earner parents themselves perceive their decision-making regarding labour divisions during lockdowns. Consequently, using data from 31 individual in-depth interviews in Belgium, this study adopts a biographical-interpretative method to assess variation in narratives regarding the household division of labour before and during lockdown. Results indicate five ideal type narratives which vary in the extent to which lockdown divisions of unpaid labour exhibit path-dependency or constitute new gender dynamics, but also regarding the balance between individual agency and societal factors as determinants of labour divisions. Taken together, narratives discussing new gender dynamics during lockdowns put forward sector-specific changes in working hours and remote work as external and exogenous determinants. However, most importantly, findings indicate that household decision-making regarding unpaid labour during lockdowns is mostly perceived as path-dependent on pre-covid decision-making (e.g. gender specialisation) in the context of structural (e.g. gendered leave schemes) and normative boundaries (e.g. gendered parenting norms). Such path-dependencies in the decision-making underlying quantitatively identifiable divisions of unpaid labour during lockdowns are likely to be neglected in the absence of a qualitative life course perspective.

Homophily on the basis of age is a notable characteristic of social convoys across the life course. Ties to older and younger persons, therefore, are both unusual and potentially provide unique social support resources. This study examined relationships with older, younger, and same-aged non-kin ties among young and late midlife adults. Data came from the University of California Berkeley Social Networks Study (UCNets), a sample of 485 people aged 21–30 and 674 people aged 50–70. A majority of non-kin ties were to people whose age was within 5 years of the participant’s own age, although the majority was much larger for young adults (81 %) than late midlife adults (52 %). Younger and older ties often came from different social settings (school, work, religious organizations, and neighborhoods) than same-aged ties, and there were also some cohort differences in the social settings that produced younger, older, and same-aged ties. Younger and older ties also provided different forms of social support than did ties to same-aged persons. Again, the functions of younger and older ties varied by cohort. Implications for life course studies are discussed.

Background

Optimizing cognitive development through early adulthood has implications for population health. This study aims to understand how socioeconomic position (SEP) across development relates to executive functioning. We evaluate three frameworks in life-course epidemiology – the sensitive period, accumulation, and social mobility hypotheses.

Methods

Participants were young adults from Santiago, Chile who were studied from 6 months to 21 years. Family SEP was measured at ages 1 y, 10 y, and 16 y with the modified Graffar Index. Executive functioning was assessed at ages 16 y and 21 y by the Trail Making Test Part B (Trails B). Analyses estimating 16 y and 21 y executive function involved 581 and 469 participants, respectively. Trails B scores were modeled as a function of SEP at 1 y, 10 y, and 16 y, as the total accumulation of disadvantage, and as change in SEP between 1 y and 10 y and between 10 y and 16 y.

Results

Participants were low- to middle-income in infancy and, on average, experienced upwards mobility across childhood. Half of participants (58%) improved Trails B scores from 16 y and 21 y. Most (68%) experienced upward social mobility between infancy and 16 y. When examined independently, worse SEP measured at 10 y and 16 y related to worse (longer time to complete) Trails B scores at Age 21 but did not relate to the other outcomes. After mutual adjustment as a test of the sensitivity hypothesis, no SEP measure was independently related to any outcome. Testing the accumulation hypothesis, cumulative low SEP was associated with worse cognitive performance at 21 y (β = 3.6, p = 0.04). Results for the social mobility hypothesis showed no relation to cognitive scores or to change in cognitive scores. Comparing all hypotheses, SEP at 16 y explained the most variability in executive functioning at 21 y, providing support for the sensitive period hypothesis.

Conclusions

Results indicate that experiencing cumulatively low socioeconomic position from infancy to adolescence can have a negative impact on cognitive functioning in young adulthood. Findings also provide evidence in support of adolescence as a key developmental period during which SEP can most strongly impact cognitive functioning.