Abstract
This paper proposes a conceptualization of the life course as a set of behavioral processes characterized by interdependencies that cross time, life domains, and levels of analysis. We first discuss the need for a systematized approach to life course theory that integrates parallel and partially redundant concepts developed in a variety of disciplines. We then introduce the 'life course cube,' which graphically defines and illustrates time-domain-level interdependencies and their multiple interactions that are central to understanding life courses. Finally, in an appendix, we offer a formal account of these interactions in a language that can be readily adopted across disciplines. Our aim is to provide a consistent and parsimonious foundation to further develop life course theories and methods and integrate life course scholarship across disciplines.
Highlights
We argued that the purpose of a theory of the life course is to explain transitions of individual actors from one biographical state to the as a result of the ‘non-linear’ dynamics of individual behavior with its numerous, multifaceted and interdependent dimensions
We take the life course to be a steady flow of an individual’s actions and experiences, which modify domain-specific biographical states and affect individual wellbeing over time
With the life course cube, we provided a parsimonious heuristic tool to identify interdependencies of time, domains, and levels that create complex life course processes
Summary
A wide array of substantive principles and methodological approaches fit under the umbrella of ‘life course research.’ These principles and approaches stem from sociology and psychology, and from disciplines such as biology, economics, anthropology, and history, and from fields such as demography, criminology, epidemiology, and health and policy sciences. Important in this regard have been preoccupations in demography with conceptualizing and measuring cohort effects (e.g., Ryder, 1965), in economics with life cycle theories of intertemporal choices (e.g., Modigliani, 1966; Loewenstein & Elster, 1992) and marginal utility (e.g., Gossen, 1998), in anthropology with evolutionary life history theory and its emphasis on the fundamental trade-offs between growth and reproduction and between quantity and quality of offspring (e.g., Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000), in biology with the differentiated functioning of living organisms during distinct phases of their “life cycle” (e.g., Bogin & Smith, 2012), in social anthropology with theories of age structuring (Kertzer & Keith, 1984), in historical science with prosopography, life story, and oral history approaches (e.g., Harrison, 2009; Perks & Thompson, 2016), in criminology with delinquency careers (e.g., Sampson & Laub, 2003), and in epidemiology with modeling pathways connecting early life conditions and later health outcomes (e.g., Wadsworth & Kuh, 2016) This is just a sampling of the many spaces in which the spirit of the life course perspective has thrived as it has evolved. Our model incorporates Elder’s principles, but more systematically tends to relevant processes
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