Browsing by Subject "Life course"
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Item The contexts of parental job loss and children's educational attainment(2014-12) Arbeit, CarenPrior research on the effects of parental job loss on children has paid little attention to the life course and contextual features of parental job loss. In my dissertation, I examine three such contexts: timing of job loss in the child's life, family socioeconomic status, the number of parental job losses and the duration of parental unemployment spells. The dissertation contains three related papers; I focus on a cohort of children in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to examine the relationship between these contexts of parental job loss and educational attainment at age 25. In the first paper, I draw from interdisciplinary research on parental job loss, sibling differences and life course theories. I consider whether the timing of a parent's job loss moderates the impact of the event on children's educational attainment in adulthood. The results suggest that, contrary to theory, timing is not a significant moderator. In the second paper, I examine the educational attainment of children born into socioeconomically similar families, but whom have divergent experiences related to parental job loss. I find that family SES primarily moderates the probability of experiencing a parental job loss. Finally, I focus on the impact of the number of parental job losses, the duration of parental unemployment spells and the interaction between number of job losses and the length of unemployment spells. I find that any parental job loss harms educational attainment, with a non-linear relationship between exposure to parental job loss and educational attainment at age 15. This dissertation on the timing of parental job loss, family socioeconomic background and exposure to job loss/unemployment helps create a fuller picture of the potential consequences of parental job loss on children's educational attainment.Item Envisioning adult lives: adolescent aspirations and expectations of work and family.(2008-06) Copher, Ronda MarieAdolescence provides a portal for understanding the life course, to examine how ideas for the future coalesce and potentially change during this time. The configurations of adolescent aspirations and expectations tell us how adolescents see adulthood, and to a lesser extent about the conceptualization of the roles they will later occupy. To further understand the process of life course formation, I examine the process of cognitive orientations toward work and family roles during adolescence. My dissertation addresses the larger question of life course formation, emphasizing the dynamic and multidimensionality of people's lives and the importance of the self in life course formation. With longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study, specifically survey data from 496 girls and 431 boys of the over 1000 adolescents survey annually since 1987, using latent class modeling, I investigate three issues: first, adolescent cognitive orientations, which are the configurations of adolescent aspirations and expectations during the adolescent period of the life course--specifically the first and last years of high school. Second, I assess the influence of precursors to and the outcomes at age 25 of the adolescent cognitive orientations. Third, I examine whether there are gender differences in the cognitive orientations of adolescent girls and boys, as well as differences in the effects of precursors and outcomes. Adolescent girls and boys exhibit both similarities and differences in their cognitive orientations. In 9 th grade, 5 different cognitive orientations characterized adolescent girls ( conventional, educationally uncertain, ambitious, occupationally ambitious, and uncertain ). In 12 th grade, adolescent girls revealed 5 cognitive orientations ( conventional, vocationally oriented, low aspirations, uncertain, and ambitious ). In contrast, 9 th grade boys had 4 cognitive orientations ( conventional, below average, uncertain, and occupationally ambitious ) and 12 th grade boys had 4 cognitive orientations ( ambitious, conventional, low aspirations, and uncertain ). Further, the effects of family, education and work experiences on the 12 th grade cognitive orientations are varied. Results additionally suggest a limited relationship of adolescent cognitive orientations to adult roles. From the empirical investigation of adolescent aspirations and expectations I derive four general conclusions which are discussed.Item The impact of family and non-family roles on caregiver health over time.(2011-06) Matzek, Amanda E.Using stress process and life course theory, this dissertation investigated pathways of adult child caregivers' family (caregiving, marital, parenting) and non-family (employment) roles and their relation to caregiver psychological and physical health over time. Eight waves of data (1992-2006) from the Health and Retirement Study were analyzed for 1,300 adult child caregivers. Latent class analysis provided strong substantive and statistical evidence for a 4-class model of caregivers' role pathways. The four pathways were (a) Married, Working Caregivers (22.5%), (b) Married, Retired Caregivers with Co-Residing Child (12.5%), (c) Married, Retired Caregivers (30.5%), and (d) Not Married, Retired Caregivers (34.6%). Married, Working Caregivers, who were more likely to be male, White, and younger than most other pathways, had more optimal psychological and subjective physical health, but were more likely to have high blood pressure compared to caregivers in other pathways. Results suggest that (a) adult child caregivers have distinct family and non-family role pathways, (b) caregivers' gender, race/ethnicity, and age predict pathway membership, and (c) caregivers' role pathways are connected to psychological and physical health over time. Future research should explore how adult child caregivers' role pathways structurally differ for male versus female and younger versus older caregivers to further explain the heterogeneity of adult child caregivers' role pathways. Family practitioners may be helpful in identifying practices and policies that help adult child caregivers manage their diverse range of long-term family and non-family roles.Item The long-term effects of exposure to medicaid in early childhood(2014-07) Boudreaux, Michel H.This project investigates the long-term effects of exposure to Medicaid in early childhood on adult health and economic status by leveraging the program's gradual adoption across the states. The staggered timing of Medicaid's introduction created variation in cumulative exposure to Medicaid for birth cohorts that are now in adulthood. I use this natural experiment in a generalized difference-in-differences framework that is complemented by a rich set of state-by-year and county-by-year controls that measure changes in public spending on the poor and health care supply. I demonstrate further support for the study design by comparing Medicaid's impact in groups that were targeted by the program versus groups that had a low probability of being eligible for benefits. I first examine the impact of Medicaid's introduction on short-run measures of utilization and infant health to establish that the program had short-term effects that could have persisted over time. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey I find that Medicaid increased the probability of any annual hospital stay by approximately 3 percentages points among low-income children under 6. Data from the National Natality Survey suggests that the program reduced the incidence of low-birth weight in the low-income population by 4 percentage points. Both findings provide evidence that the introduction of Medicaid created meaningful short-run benefits that could have persisted over time. To examine the program's long-term impacts I use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results suggest that in subgroups targeted by the program, exposure to Medicaid in childhood (age 0-5) is associated with statistically significant and meaningful improvements in adult health (age 18-54). I find no evidence for an economic effect, but the point estimates are imprecise and the findings are inconclusive. I discuss the significance of my results in the context of a dynamic model of child development that interacts with an evolving U.S. health system.Item Turning points in the transition to adulthood(2012-10) Fischer, Laura L.The concept of turning point is an important notion in studies of the Life Course. In the black and white world of the life story, turning points appear in living color; they flash in memory, meaningful in bold relief. Turning points stand out as times when we find ourselves plunging through the looking glass to the place where nothing is as it was before; to the place where Strauss suggested, "I am not the same person as I was, as I used to be" (Strauss 1959:93). Since the time of Strauss turning points have been conceptualized in a number of ways. Yet, little is known about how young people in transition to adulthood express and experience turning points. To investigate subjective experiences of turning points, 80 narrative interviews randomly sampled from the MacArthur Foundation Qualitative Study on the Transition to Adulthood. These interviews have been gathered from five locations in the United States and include a number of questions salient to the transition to adulthood. Subjective expressions of change are analyzed in terms of a classical composite defintion of turning points. Findings are suggestive indicating that turning point experiences contain elements of the classical definition and appear prominent particularly in the domain of immigration. An ideal type turning point is suggested as a tool for future studies.