Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (E-Journal)
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The transition to adulthood across time and space: overview of Special Section
Get PDFIn this Special Section of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, we provide complementary findings from four well-established national and community-based studies about distinct patterns of social role combinations in early adulthood, along with the antecedents and health and well-being correlates of the distinct patterns (Maggs et al 2012, Räikkönen, Kokko and Pulkkinen 2012, Salmela-Aro, Ek and Chen 2012, Schoon et al 2012). Collectively, our data span two birth cohorts (born 1958-59 and 1966-70) and three countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Finland, with each birth cohort represented in each country. This opportunity to compare and contrast patterns of transition outcomes across time and across cultures provides us with leverage on the understanding of the transition to adulthood, not typically available. Across the studies, longitudinal data span childhood through early adulthood. Each study focuses on identifying distinct patterns of role combinations by ages 25-27 in terms of the “big 5" transition markers (Settersten 2007) comprising educational attainment, work status, independent living, romantic partnership, and parenthood. It has been argued that country differences in completing the five transition markers are largest around age 25 and relatively small before age 20 and after age 35 (Cook and Furstenberg 2002). Examining transition outcomes and role combinations of cohort members in their mid-20s thus provides a unique snapshot and important insights into similarities and differences in transition experiences of young people growing up in different cultural contexts and in different historical periods. For example, consistent with previous research (Osgood et al 2005, Ross et al 2009), some common patterns we found include "traditional family" (limited college, full-time employed or homemaker, independent from parents, married or cohabiting, and with children) and "work orientation without children" (college graduate, full-time employed, independent from parents, average rates of marriage and cohabitation, and no children). Each study also examines the demographic and educational antecedents and psychosocial correlates/outcomes of the patterns (including well-being and substance use). As will be shown, we find some expected differences across countries and cohorts in terms of configurations and prevalences of the distinct patterns, along with some remarkable similarities across time and space in these patterns and their antecedents and correlates. To set the stage for the empirical papers in this Special Section, we provide an overview regarding the transition to adulthood in developmental, historical, and international context. We furthermore discuss methodological opportunities and challenges involved in describing life course patterns and doing comparative research. We conclude with consideration of theoretical and methodological implications
The HILDA Survey: a case study in the design and development of a successful Household Panel Survey
Get PDFThe Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is one of only a small number of well established, large nationally representative household panel studies conducted in the world. With annual data collection commencing in 2001 there are now over 10 years of unit record data available to researchers, with the promise of many more to come. While the design of the HILDA Survey owes much to other older household panel studies conducted elsewhere, it has a number of features which make it relatively unique. This paper provides a brief history of the HILDA Survey’s progress to date, focusing first on its design, content and data collection processes, before reviewing its achievements with respect to survey response and usage
Social role patterning in early adulthood in the USA: adolescent predictors and concurrent wellbeing across four distinct configurations
Get PDFThe decade following secondary school is pivotal in setting the stage for adulthood functioning and adjustment. We identify four social role configurations of early adults in their mid-20s using latent class analyses in two nationally representative samples of American youth in their last year of secondary education (modal age 18) who were followed longitudinally into adulthood (age 25/26). We focus on the big five social role domains of early adulthood: education, residential status, employment, cohabitation/marriage, and parenthood. Aims were to identify latent classes of social role configurations in early adulthood, examine demographic and late adolescent educational predictors of these classes, and explore contemporaneous health and adjustment correlates focusing on life satisfaction, economic independence, and substance use. Four classes with very similar characteristics and prevalence were identified in the two cohorts who were born 12 years apart: Educated Students without Children (8% in 80s cohort/9% in 90s cohort); Working Singles Living with Parents (16%/18%); Educated Workers without Children (45%/46%); and Married Workers with Children (31%/27%). Late adolescent demographic and educational variables and mid-20s variables were related to class membership. Results evidenced notable similarities (and some differences) across cohorts. Discussion focuses on how roles facilitate or inhibit each other and the potential diversity of optimal patterns of transitions to adulthood.
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: overview, recent innovations, and potential for life course research
Get PDFSpanning over four decades, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the world’s longest running household panel survey. The resulting data archive presents research opportunities for breakthroughs in understanding the connections between economic status, health and well-being across generations and over the life course. The long panel, genealogical design, and broad content of the data represent a unique opportunity for a multi-perspective study of life course evolution and change within families over multiple generations. Based on relational data structures and advanced web-based archiving and delivery tools, the PSID has a publicly available web-based facility for users worldwide to create customized data extracts and codebooks based on nearly 70,000 variables from over 70,000 individuals over 44 years. This paper provides an overview of the PSID and its supplemental studies, the Disability and Use of Time Supplement, the Child Development Supplement, and the Transition into Adulthood study, and describes features and recent enhancements that have increased the potential of the archive for studying life course development
Emotional and behavioural problems in childhood and risk of overall and cause-specific morbidity and mortality in middle-aged Finnish men
Get PDFBackground Psychosocial problems in childhood affect the health in adulthood. Few studies have examined the influence of psychosocial problems in childhood with regard to cancer mortality, all-cause mortality and cardiovascular morbidity and alcohol-associated mortality. The purpose of this study was to investigate psychosocial, emotional, and conduct problems in childhood as a predictor of cancer, all-cause and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and alcohol-associated morbidity from historical information. Methods The subjects were male participants from the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD), a population-based cohort study in eastern Finland with follow-up until 2002. Data on psychosocial problems in childhood were collected from school health records (n=952), mainly from the 1930s to 1950s. Adulthood risk data were obtained from baseline examinations in 1984-1989. Results Men who had psychosocial problems in childhood had a 2.26-fold (95% CI 1.15 to 4.43) age- and examination-year adjusted risk of cancer death. After adjustment for biological and behavioural risk factors and for the socioeconomic position both in childhood and adulthood the association remained. Cancer mortality (lung cancer deaths excluded), and alcohol-associated diseases showed also elevated risk, but the results were not statistically significant. Conduct problems in childhood were associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality in adulthood. Conclusions Our findings suggest that psychosocial problems in childhood are associated with increased risk of cancer mortality in adulthood mainly through life-style factors, such as smoking and alcohol consumption
Explaining the socio-economic gradient in child outcomes: the inter-generational transmission of cognitive skills
Get PDFPapers in this Special Issue and elsewhere consistently find a strong relationship between children’s cognitive abilities and their parents’ socio-economic position (SEP). Most studies seeking to explain the paths through which SEP affects cognitive skills suffer from a potentially serious omitted variables problem, as they are unable to account for an important determinant of children’s cognitive abilities, namely parental cognitive ability. A range of econometric strategies have been employed to overcome this issue, but in this paper, we adopt the very simple (but rarely available) route of using data that includes a range of parental characteristics measured during the parents’ childhood, such as parental cognitive ability and social skills. In line with previous work on the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills, we find that parental cognitive ability is a significant predictor of children’s cognitive ability; moreover, it explains one sixth of the socio-economic gap in those skills, even after controlling for a rich set of demographic, attitudinal and behavioural factors. Despite the importance of parental cognitive ability in explaining children’s cognitive ability, however, the additional parental characteristics we examine here do not alter our impression of the relative importance of other factors in explaining the socio-economic gap in cognitive skills. This is reassuring for studies that are unable to control for such characteristics.JE
Understanding panel conditioning: an examination of social desirability bias in self-reported height and weight in panel surveys using experimental data
Get PDFTypically reliant on self-reports from panel data, a growing body of literature suggests that relative body weight can have negative effects on labour market outcomes. Given the interest in the effects of relative weight in the social sciences, this paper addresses the question of whether repeated interviewing affects the quality of these data. A theory that focuses on the sensitivity of the questions rather than the survey context is proposed. Examining experimental panel data from Understanding Society using quantile-regression, the findings for women are consistent with the argument that conditioning reduces social desirability effects. The ameliorative effects of panel conditioning on social desirability bias in self-reported height and bodyweight appear to strengthen the association between relative weight and employment for men, but not women, however
Developmental trajectories of body mass index throughout the life course: an application of Latent Class Growth (Mixture) Modelling
Get PDFThe aims of this study are 1) to analyse developmental trajectories of body fatness from adolescence into adulthood, thereby determining the number and characteristics of distinct body fatness trajectories, and 2) to relate these distinct subgroups to indicators of cardiovascular disease risk, revealing subgroups specifically at risk. This paper will illustrate in more detail the application of Latent Class Growth (Mixture) Modelling (LCGMM) on longitudinal, observational data. Data were obtained from the Amsterdam Growth and Health Longitudinal Study, an ongoing observational study of apparently healthy participants (n=336). Participants were followed up from 13-42 years of age. Body Mass Index was used as a marker for body fatness and cardiovascular diseases (CVD)-risk factors included Mean Arterial Pressure and HDL-Cholesterol. LCGMM was used for the identification of developmental trajectories of body fatness, and linear regression analyses were used for the associations between the trajectories and CVD-risk. Analyses revealed three distinct trajectories; a "normative" trajectory (88.4%), a progressively overweight trajectory (4.5%) and a progressively overweight but stabilising trajectory (7.1%). Significant differences in CVD-risk between these trajectories appeared. These results show that body fatness development throughout life is heterogeneous, showing differences in CVD-risk. This paper also demonstrates that LCGMM is a promising technique to distinguish between subjects with different developmental trajectories
Temporary and permanent unit non-response in follow-up interviews of the Health and Retirement Study
Get PDFWe study the effects of attrition and other unit non-response in the HRS on inferences about the distribution of socio-economic variables. A feature of the HRS is that efforts are made to bring non-respondents in a particular wave back in the next wave. For cross-section distributions of socio-economic variables of interest in 2004, we find much larger selection effects when discarding this group than when temporary non-respondents are included. A similar conclusion is obtained from our analysis of examples of panel data models, explaining changes in wealth, health, or labor force participation. This has implications for users and designers of the HRS as well as other surveys