Advances in Life Course Research最新文献

Labour market disadvantages tend to run in families: children who grow up with parents who experience job losses or receive low wages are themselves at higher risk of experiencing labour market difficulties. However, little is known about the intergenerational transmission for those who manage to escape from precariousness, and how the transmission of labour market disadvantage operates depending on the gender structure of parent-child dyads. The present study uses Swedish register data and longitudinal methods that follow a cohort of people born in 1985 (n = 72,409) and their parents across 26 years. Our findings show that children who experienced parental employment disadvantages had the most severe labour market disadvantages later in life. However, if the employment situations of their parents improved, they were somewhat more likely to follow a more stable, high-wage career path compared to children whose parents experienced more persistent forms of disadvantage, such as long-term unemployment or severe labour market instability. We also show that the mother’s labour market disadvantages were an important determinant of the future labour market career of her child, regardless of gender. This finding underscores the need to go beyond the analysis of father-son dyads in intergenerational research.

People take risks at all ages to achieve certain goals. Although these goals may be achieved through negative risks (e.g., adolescent drinking to impress their friends), people also take positive risks. Positive risks are theorized to help individuals achieve goals in developmentally appropriate and socially acceptable ways, such as initiating a new friendship as an adolescent, applying for a promotion as a young adult, or exploring a new hobby as a retiree. To test the hypothesis that people endorse different patterns of risk-taking across life, we examined age patterns in positive and negative risk-taking with a sample of individuals ranging in age from 12 to 71 years. In adults aged 19–71, we also examined to what extent positive and negative risk-taking are associated with domain-specific risk-taking and risk-taking propensity. Results indicated that positive risk-taking varied with age in the form of an inverted-U shape and peaked in middle adulthood. Negative antisocial risk-taking varied with age in the form of a U shape and was highest in adolescence. Negative health risk-taking varied with age in the form of an inverted-U shape and peaked in middle adulthood. In adults, greater positive risk-taking was associated with greater risk-taking in the social domain and greater risk-taking propensity. Greater negative risk-taking was associated with greater risk-taking in ethical and health/safety domains, and with greater risk-taking propensity. Altogether, this study is the first to demonstrate age patterns in positive and negative risk-taking across adolescence and adulthood. It also contributes to the validity of positive risk-taking as a construct distinct from negative risk-taking.

Network theories and life course theories have made significant contributions to the study of relationship change over time. However, much prior work takes a unidimensional approach and conceptualizes “change” in terms of the loss of a tie or the loss of a specific function of a tie. Our paper problematizes “loss” in two ways. First, we conceptualize tie status in terms of active, inactive, and fully dissolved as reported by respondents. Second, we propose a multidimensional approach to studying the relationship change as the result of experiencing major life events. Our main innovation is synthesizing network theories and life course theories to produce a framework for studying relationship change that incorporates types of ties, experiencing major life events, and their interacting effects on specific aspects of the relationship. Based on analyzing a sample of 687 ties collected from 98 respondents, we argue that life events do not have sweeping influence across different types of ties or different aspects of ties. Instead, relationship change in response to life events can occur in changes in the active status of the tie, the interactive aspect of the tie, and the affective aspect of the tie, and which aspects change is dependent on the type of relationship.

We consider linked lives through the Convoy Model of Social Relations to illustrate their complexity, consequences, and development across contexts. To illustrate how the Convoy Model lens provides a unique opportunity to examine the multidimensional and dynamic character of linked lives across time and space, we analyze twenty-three years of longitudinal data from the Social Relations Study (SRS). The SRS is a regionally representative Detroit-area sample (N=1,498) with three waves (1992; 2005; 2015) of data from community dwelling people age 13 to 93. We present three illustrative examples of linked lives: 1) the influence of earlier life social network characteristics (size and closeness) on later life health outcomes; 2) the influence of social position (race and education) on relationship quality with spouse/partner and child over time; and 3) the influence of transitioning from working to retirement on network structure (size and geographic proximity). Findings illustrate linked lives through multiple instances of social relationships and as influenced by various contexts. Further, the consequences of linked lives for mental health are consistent across the life course while influence on physical health is variable. The Convoy Model presents key concepts to situate the ways in which linked lives form and function at various levels and across multiple contexts to have far reaching effects on life outcomes.

Social connections are an integral part of living in society, and trends in social connectedness are thus closely scrutinized. The phenomenon of networked individualism argues that densely knit communities organized around formal social groups such as households and workplaces are becoming less common. Due to advances in technology, individuals are able to develop personalized communities that are more diverse and less geographically-bound. The objective of this study was to determine how both average levels and the variability of social connectedness have changed across cohorts, and how much of this is due to increased internet use. Data from 2006, 2008, 2016, and 2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study were used to investigate cohort changes in various indicators of social connectedness. The analytical sample consisted of older adults aged 58–69 from the Silent Generation (born 1920–1947) and Baby Boomers (born 1948–1965). Heteroscedastic regression models and decomposition methods were used to investigate the role of increased internet use in driving some of these changes. Findings suggest that increases in internet use was associated with increases in the variance of social participation (i.e., contact with friends and family) in the United States. However, evidence around more subjective measures of social connectedness (i.e., social support, loneliness) was less clear. Future research should seek to understand how cohort change in technological use may affect objective and subjective aspects of social connectedness in different ways.

Thousands of Indian women and girls enter the commercial sex industry (CSI) annually based solely on membership in particular castes (e.g., Bedia, Nat). CSI-involved females bear the burden of sustaining entire family units on money earned in the sex trade; it is a life-long responsibility with negligible social status or personal indemnity. Based on the life-course developmental theory (Elder, Jr. 1994, 1998) this investigation was intended to examine trafficked women’s experiences within the commercial sex industry across time. Beyond the CSI, we were equally interested in experiences with factors that could promote well-being (i.e., social support) and normative developmental transitions including education attainment and motherhood. To that end, three questions were posed. First, to what extent do factors surrounding CSI entry and continued involvement differ through time among CSI-involved Bedia? Second, how do CSI-involved Bedia describe social network composition and perceived support through time? Finally, are differences detectable, through time, in CSI-involved Bedia women’s experiences with normative developmental transitions including education attainment and motherhood? Interview data were collected from 31 Bedia females (age range 17 – 65 years) residing in rural Madhya Pradesh, India. To examine change through time, participants were divided into cohorts based on age and time involved in the commercial sex industry. Data were then analyzed within and across cohorts with particular attention to cohort-related experiential differences. Policy implications and suggestions for continued research are presented.

Decisions about which contraceptives to use are a key component of a couple’s “fertility work,” and these decisions can be made in homogamous or heterogamous couple contexts. Relative resource theory and the strain perspective suggest that heterogamy may lead to differences in bargaining power or higher levels of discordance within couples, thereby affecting the distribution of fertility work and decisions about which contraceptives a couple will use. While heterogamy has been linked to less effective contraceptive use amongst teenagers, its role in the contraceptive behavior of married and cohabiting women has been less widely studied. This study examines the association between relationship context in terms of education, age, and race/ethnicity heterogamy and partnered women’s use of contraceptives. We used data on partnered women aged 20–45 who were trying to avoid pregnancy from the 2006–2015 National Survey of Family Growth (n = 8097). We used multinomial logistic regressions to determine whether education, age, or race/ethnicity heterogamy was associated with the use of male or female sterilization, long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), other hormonal contraceptives, or other non-hormonal methods. We did not find consistent evidence that relative bargaining power due to higher education, more advanced age, or racial/ethnic privilege resulted in the use of methods requiring lower levels of fertility work. We found some evidence supporting the strain perspective. Younger women (20−34) who differed from their partners along two or more dimensions were less likely to use contraceptive methods requiring ongoing effort and coordination (i.e., LARCs, other hormonal methods, and non-hormonal methods). This association was not observed among women aged 35–45. Despite the more permanent nature of marriage/cohabitation, differences between partners in heterogamous relationships may factor into the contraceptive decision-making process, especially among younger adults at earlier stages of their relationships.

The increasing participation of women in the labor market coexists with traditional gender roles and a social division of labor that reproduces the feminization of childcare and housework. Reconciling the contradictions between work and family life has become one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary female life course. In this article, I analyze the strategies through which women in Santiago de Chile negotiate their participation in the labor market after the transition to motherhood using qualitative data produced through 28 in-depth life story interviews. The findings confirm that married women from older age cohorts and middle socioeconomic status scale down paid work by working part-time, reducing their working hours, and finding more flexible and less demanding jobs that are closer to home. However, the findings also reveal that single women from younger age cohorts and lower socioeconomic status scale up on paid work by working full-time and finding jobs that are more demanding, involve longer workdays and provide better salaries and social benefits. These findings advance knowledge on the strategies through which women from different age cohorts and family and socioeconomic status negotiate paid work after becoming mothers and highlight the importance of taking a situated and intersectional approach to account for the particular ways in which women reconcile work and family life.

Only children, here defined as individuals growing up without siblings, are a small but growing demographic subgroup. Existing research has consistently shown that, on average, only children have higher body mass index (BMI) than individuals who grow up with siblings. How this difference develops with age is unclear and existing evidence is inconclusive regarding the underlying mechanisms. We investigate BMI trajectories for only children and those with siblings up to late adolescence for four British birth cohorts and across adulthood for three cohorts. We use data on BMI from ages 2–63 years (cohort born 1946); 7–55 years (born 1958); 10–46 (born 1970) and 3–17 years (born 2000–2002). Using mixed effects regression separately for each cohort, we estimate the change in BMI by age comparing only children and those with siblings. The results show higher average BMI among only children in each cohort, yet the difference is substantively small and limited to school age and adolescence. The association between sibling status and BMI at age 10/11 is not explained by differential health behaviours (physical activity, inactivity and diet) or individual or family background characteristics in any of the cohorts. Although persistent across cohorts, and despite the underlying mechanism remaining unexplained, the substantively small magnitude of the observed difference and the convergence of the trajectories by early adulthood in all cohorts raises doubts about whether the difference in BMI between only children and siblings in the UK context should be of research or clinical concern. Future research could usefully be directed more at whether only children experience elevated rates of disease, for which high BMI is a risk factor, at different stages of the life course and across contexts.

Young adulthood is a dynamic and demographically dense stage in the life course. This poses a challenge for research on the socioeconomic consequences of parenthood timing, which most often focuses on women. We chart the dynamics of delayed parenthood and its implications for educational and labor market trajectories for young adult women and men using a novel longitudinal analysis approach, the parametric g-formula. This method allows the estimation of both population-averaged effects (among all women and men) and average treatment effects (among mothers and fathers). Based on high-quality data from Finnish registers, we find that later parenthood exacerbates the educational advantage of women in comparison to men and attenuates the income advantage of men in comparison to women across young adult ages. Gender differences in the consequences of delayed parenthood on labor market trajectories are largely not explained by changes in educational trajectories. Moreover, at the time of entering parenthood, delayed parenthood improves the incomes of fathers more than those of mothers, thereby exacerbating existing gender differences. The results provide population-level evidence on how the delay of parenthood has contributed to the strengthening of women’s educational position relative to that of men. Further, the findings on greater increases in fathers’ than mothers’ incomes at the time of entering parenthood, as followed by postponement, may help explain why progress in achieving gender equality in the division of paid and unpaid work in families has been slow.