Life-Course Implications of US Public Policy


Book Description

There is a complex set of public policies and associated programs that constitute the social safety net in the United States. In Life-Course Implications of U.S. Public Policies, the authors encourage others to systematically consider the influence of policies and programs on lives, aging, and the life course, and how the consequences might vary by gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, and social class. The volume aims to foster an appreciation of how policy influences connect and condition the life course. Chapters examine issues relating to health, housing, food security, crime, employment, and care work, amongst other issues, and demonstrate how the principles of the life-course perspective and cumulative inequality theory can be used to inform contemporary public policy debates. Life-Course Implications of U.S. Public Policies will be a great resource for students of gerontology, sociology, demography, social work, public health and public policy, as well as policy makers, researchers in think tanks, and advocates, who are concerned with age-based policy.




A Life Course Perspective on Health Trajectories and Transitions


Book Description

This open access book examines health trajectories and health transitions at different stages of the life course, including childhood, adulthood and later life. It provides findings that assess the role of biological and social transitions on health status over time. The essays examine a wide range of health issues, including the consequences of military service on body mass index, childhood obesity and cardiovascular health, socio-economic inequalities in preventive health care use, depression and anxiety during the child rearing period, health trajectories and transitions in people with cystic fibrosis and oral health over the life course. The book addresses theoretical, empirical and methodological issues as well as examines different national contexts, which help to identify factors of vulnerability and potential resources that support resilience available for specific groups and/or populations. Health reflects the ability of individuals to adapt to their social environment. This book analyzes health as a dynamic experience. It examines how different aspects of individual health unfold over time as a result of aging but also in relation to changing socioeconomic conditions. It also offers readers potential insights into public policies that affect the health status of a population.




Building Health Throughout the Life Course


Book Description

Building Health Throughout the Life Courseelucidates how health develops and changes throughout the life course, and how the use of the life course approach among public health practitioners can ensure that health as a human right is achieved for all individuals. It describes the life course vision of health that focuses not only on diseases and their consequences, but rather on achieving long, healthy, active, and productive lives. The book consists of three stand-alone parts. Part 1, "Concepts", aims to illuminate the complexity of health through the understanding of the life course approach. It can be used to familiarize oneself with the evolution and meaning of the life course, which serves as a basis for effective public health practice. Part 2, "Implications", identifies the implications for the operationalization of the life course approach in public health. It translates the technical language of the life course literature to understand how the application of the life course approach requires changes in health systems, policies, research, and practice. Part 3, "Application in Public Health", identifies key opportunities to strengthen the adoption of the life course approach in public health practice. It describes concrete, evidence-based actions to improve health and well-being through the promotion and generation of skills throughout the life course. This book aims to help decision-makers and public health professionals to understand the life course meaning and concepts, which is essential to comprehend how health develops and changes throughout the life course. The book also describes how the life course model allows us to address health disparities by generating mechanisms to improve health and well-being by promoting the vision of health as the product of a series of experiences that contribute to or detract from health in the near and long term.




Life Course Perspectives on Military Service


Book Description

This edited volume provides a comprehensive and critical review of what we know about military service and the life course, what we don’t know, and what we need to do to better understand the role of military service in shaping people's lives. It demonstrates that the military, like colleges and prisons, is a key social institution that engages individuals in early adulthood and shapes processes of cumulative (dis)advantage over the life course. The chapters provide topical synthesizes of the vast but diffuse research literatures on military service and the life course, while the volume as a whole helps to set the agenda for the next generation of data collection and scholarship. Chapter authors pay particular attention to how the military has changed over time; how experiences of military service vary across cohorts and persons with different characteristics; how military service affects the lives of service members’ spouses, children, and families; and the linkages between research and policy.




Older Workers and Labour Market Exclusion Processes


Book Description

This open access book addresses the important and neglected question of older workers who are excluded from the labour market. It challenges post-capitalist discourses of active ageing with a focus on restrictive end-of-career and retirement measures. The book demonstrates how a paradigm shift is generating real processes of exclusion for important sectors of the population. By providing strong empirical evidence from different contexts, the impact of different life course trajectories on the risks and the opportunities at the end of career are demonstrated. The organisation of workplace and institutional frameworks which reinforce inequalities are also presented. As such the book is an essential reading for students, academics and policy makers who seek to understand how exclusion processes operate to the disadvantage of older workers in the labour market.







The Social Science of Same-Sex Marriage


Book Description

Showcasing research from across the social sciences, this edited volume seeks to provide readers with an empirically grounded sense of how many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people marry in the US and Canada, what their marriages look like, and how LGBT people themselves are impacted by marriage and marriage equality. Prior to marriage equality, lawmakers and activists across the political spectrum debated whether same-sex couples should have the legal right to marry, and likewise, academic research to date has focused mostly on the politics of same-sex marriage. However, this edited volume focuses on LGBT people themselves and their intimate relationships in the era of marriage equality. Including both quantitative and qualitative social science research, it features 14 primary chapters that examine a diverse set of topics, including demographic patterns in same-sex marriage and cohabitation, marital aspirations and motivations among LGBT people, arrangements and dynamics within same-sex relationships, and the legal benefits and informal privileges associated with marriage. The edited volume will be of interest to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, child and family studies, communications, social work, and economics, while also offering valuable information for laypeople generally interested in families and/or LGBT studies.




Handbook of the Life Course


Book Description

Building on the success of the 2003 Handbook of the Life Course, this second volume identifies future directions for life course research and policy. The introductory essay and the chapters that make up the five sections of this book, show consensus on strategic “next steps” in life course studies. These next steps are explored in detail in each section: Section I, on life course theory, provides fresh perspectives on well-established topics, including cohorts, life stages, and legal and regulatory contexts. It challenges life course scholars to move beyond common individualistic paradigms. Section II highlights changes in major institutional and organizational contexts of the life course. It draws on conceptual advances and recent empirical findings to identify promising avenues for research that illuminate the interplay between structure and agency. It examines trends in family, school, and workplace, as well as contexts that deserve heightened attention, including the military, the criminal justice system, and natural and man-made disaster. The remaining three sections consider advances and suggest strategic opportunities in the study of health and development throughout the life course. They explore methodological innovations, including qualitative and three-generational longitudinal research designs, causal analysis, growth curves, and the study of place. Finally, they show ways to build bridges between life course research and public policy.




Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging


Book Description

This eight-volume encyclopedia brings together a comprehensive collection of work highlighting established research and emerging science in all relevant disciplines in gerontology and population aging. It covers the breadth of the field, gives readers access to all major sub-fields, and illustrates their interconnectedness with other disciplines. With more than 1300 cross-disciplinary contributors—including anthropologists, biologists, economists, psychiatrists, public policy experts, sociologists, and others—the encyclopedia delves deep into key areas of gerontology and population aging such as ageism, biodemography, disablement, longevity, long-term care, and much more. Paying careful attention to empirical research and literature from around the globe, the encyclopedia is of interest to a wide audience that includes researchers, teachers and students, policy makers, (non)governmental agencies, public health practitioners, business planners, and many other individuals and organizations.




Consumer Behavior over the Life Course


Book Description

This book examines consumer behavior using the “life course” paradigm, a multidisciplinary framework for studying people's lives, structural contexts, and social change. It contributes to marketing research by providing new insights into the study of consumer behavior and illustrating how to apply the life course paradigm’s concepts and theoretical perspectives to study consumer topics in an innovative way. Although a growing number of marketing researchers, either implicitly or explicitly, subscribe to life course perspectives for studying a variety of consumer behaviors, their efforts have been limited due to a lack of theories and methods that would help them study consumers over the lifecycle. When studying consumers over their lifespan, researchers examine differences in the consumer behaviors of various age groups (e.g., children, baby boomers, elderly, etc.) or family life stages (e.g., bachelors, full nesters, empty nesters, etc.), inferring that consumer behavior changes over time or linking consumption behaviors to previous experiences and future expectations. Such efforts, however, have yet to benefit from an interdisciplinary research approach. This book fills this gap in consumer research by informing readers about the differences between some of the most commonly used models for studying consumers over their lifespan and the life course paradigm, and providing implications for research, public policy, and marketing practice. Presenting applications of the life course approach in such research topics as decision making, maladaptive behaviors (e.g., compulsive buying, binge eating), consumer well-being, and cognitive decline, this book is beneficial for students, scholars, professors, practitioners, and policy makers in consumer behavior, consumer research, consumer psychology, and marketing research.