Life-course Dynamics Research Articles

Understanding how race/ethnicity and gender define age-trajectories of disability: An intersectionality approach

A number of studies have demonstrated wide disparities in health among racial/ethnic groups and by gender, yet few have examined how race/ethnicity and gender intersect or combine to affect the health of older adults. The tendency of prior research to treat race/ethnicity and gender separately has potentially obscured important differences in how health is produced and maintained, undermining efforts to eliminate health disparities. The current study extends previous research by taking an intersectionality approach (Mullings & Schulz, 2006), grounded in life course theory, conceptualizing and modeling trajectories of functional limitations as dynamic life course processes that are jointly and simultaneously defined by race/ethnicity and gender. Data from the nationally representative 1994–2006 US Health and Retirement Study and growth curve models are utilized to examine racial/ethnic/gender differences in intra-individual change in functional limitations among White, Black and Mexican American Men and Women, and the extent to which differences in life course capital account for group disparities in initial health status and rates of change with age. Results support an intersectionality approach, with all demographic groups exhibiting worse functional limitation trajectories than White Men. Whereas White Men had the lowest disability levels at baseline, White Women and racial/ethnic minority Men had intermediate disability levels and Black and Hispanic Women had the highest disability levels. These health disparities remained stable with age—except among Black Women who experience a trajectory of accelerated disablement. Dissimilar early life social origins, adult socioeconomic status, marital status, and health behaviors explain the racial/ethnic disparities in functional limitations among Men but only partially explain the disparities among Women. Net of controls for life course capital, Women of all racial/ethnic groups have higher levels of functional limitations relative to White Men and Men of the same race/ethnicity. Findings highlight the utility of an intersectionality approach to understanding health disparities.

Contextualised Mobility Histories of Moving Desires and Actual Moving Behaviour

Conceptually, adopting a life course approach when analysing residential mobility enables us to investigate how experiencing particular life events affects mobility decision-making and behaviour throughout individual lifetimes. Yet although a growing body of longitudinal research links mobility decision-making to subsequent moving behaviour, most studies focus solely upon examining year-to-year transitions. As a result of this 'snap-shot' approach, little is known about how pre-move thoughts and subsequent mobility relate over longer periods within the context of dynamic life course trajectories. Current research therefore fails to distinguish ephemeral moving desires from those which are persistently expressed. This study is one of the first to move beyond investigating year-to-year transitions to explore the long term sequencing of moving desires and mobility behaviour within individual life courses. Using innovative techniques to visualise the sequences of a panel of British Household Panel Survey respondents, the study demonstrates that the meanings and significance of particular transitions in moving desires and mobility behaviour become apparent only when these transitions are arranged into individual mobility histories. We uncover previously ignored groups of individuals persistently unable to act in accordance with their moving desires. Visualising mobility histories also highlights the oft-neglected importance of residential stability over the life course.

Changes in Adult Child Caregiver Networks

Caregiving research has typically relied on cross-sectional data that focus on the primary caregiver. This approach neglects the dynamic and systemic character of caregiver networks. Our analyses addressed changes in adult child care networks over a 2-year period. The study relied on pooled data from Waves 1 through 5 of the Health and Retirement Study. Based on a matrix of specific adult child caregivers across two consecutive time points, we assessed changes in any adult child caregiver as well as in the primary adult child caregiver. More than half of all adult-child care networks, including more than one fourth of primary adult child caregivers, changed between waves. Gender composition of the caregiver network and availability of other adult child caregivers were particularly important for network change, but socioeconomic context, caregiver abilities and resources, and caregiver burden played a role as well. The results underline the need to shift caregiving research toward a dynamic life course and family systems perspective. They also raise concerns about the viability of informal care networks for future smaller birth cohorts and suggest that health care providers need to recognize and address coordination and potential conflicts among care network members.

Life-course Dynamics

In the Dutch research program “Life-Course Dynamics” three projects in progress are presented which study the self-organization of behavior over the course of life at different levels of theorizing on the basis of a longitudinal data set, generated by means of the Lifeline Interview Method (LIM). The first project describes different aspects of the dynamic structure and content of individual lives. It was found among other things that the structure of life is dominated by the Principle of the Constant Life Perspective, i.e., the sum of past and future autobiographical events, is constant over the lifespan, while their relation changes systematically with age. Content analysis and compression of the LIM data set of life events resulted in the composition of six modal “self-portraits” with regard to both past and future of young, middle-aged, and older men and women, respectively. The second project, based on the principles of gerodynamics and branching theory, studies how people manage their lives, and how they cope with transformations and react to affective-positive and negative life events. To this end, the content of the LIM narratives needs to be examined in terms of experienced past and expected future, age, gender, transformations, events, and affect, and in relation to measures of personality, coping, and locus of control. The third project studies autobiographical memory as a dynamic system of both retrospective and prospective memory, subject to continuous changes across the lifespan. It was found among other things that processes of development and aging account for the autobiographical memory “bump,” and that these processes might also account for the differential course of other neurobehavioral functions.

The Life-Course Dynamics of Goal Pursuit and Goal Adjustment: A Two-Process Framework

A dual-process framework is proposed for understanding how the self-system negotiates the conflicting demands of ensuring a stable pursuit of goals and plans while adjusting to changes that affect their attainability. The model distinguishes two basic modes of reducing discrepancies between desired and factual situations or developmental outcomes: The assimilative mode comprises intentional efforts to modify the actual situation in accordance with personal goals, whereas the accommodative mode engages mechanisms that promote the adjustment of goals to constraints and changes in action resources. Differential conditions, underlying cognitive mechanisms, as well as life-course implications of these regulatory modes are specified. Empirical findings are presented that illustrate the explanatory scope of the model and its implications for well-being, efficacy, and successful aging.

Building an inter-disciplinary science of health inequalities: the example of lifecourse research

Across the post-industrial world, new public health strategies are being developed with the goal of reducing the socio-economic gradient in health. These new strategies are distinguished by a commitment to tackling the macro determinants of health inequalities through policies informed by scientific evidence. The engagement with macro determinants and with scientific evidence presents a major challenge to the health inequality research community. This is not only because of the complexity of the links between distal causes, proximal risk factors and health outcomes. It is also and more importantly because of the narrow disciplinary base of health inequality research. Grounded in social epidemiology, health inequality research has illuminated the pathways which run from individual socio-economic position to health—but has left in shadow the factors which influence socio-economic position. Broadening the evidence base to include these structural processes requires a new science of health inequalities, resourced both by epidemiological research and by research on social inequality and social exclusion. The paper demonstrates how such an inter-disciplinary science can be constructed. Taking lifecourse research as its example and the UK as its case study, it nests epidemiological research within social policy research: setting evidence on the health consequences of cumulative exposures within research on lifecourse dynamics, and locating both within analyses of how state policies can amplify or moderate inequalities in socio-economic position.

Dynamics of Women's Employment Patterns over the Family Life Course: A Comparison of the United States and Germany

We use event history analysis to study the effects of family-related factors on the employment behavior of U.S. and (West) German women in a dynamic life course perspective. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the German Socioeconomic Panel are analyzed to examine the differential determinants of entry into and exit from full-time and part-time employment during the family life course and the differences in these processes between the two countries. Marriage and childbearing continue to influence exit from and entry into paid work in both countries. Family structure plays a stronger role in women's working lives in Germany than in the U.S., and part-time work in Germany is more closely related to childbearing.