The impact imperative

Based on Keynote Presentation to Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference at Stirling University, October 2017

Tracking the Gendered Life Courses of Care Leavers in 19th-Century Britain

The adult outcomes of children raised in care are a matter of much concern in Britain today. Care leavers account for a quarter of the adult prison population, a tenth of the young homeless population, and over two thirds of sex workers (Centre for Social Justice, 2015: 4). This article argues that, by contrast, the first generation of boys and girls passing through the early care system were more likely to have experienced a modest improvement in their life chances. It explores three key questions. First, what mechanisms shaped adult outcomes of care in the past? Second, did these vary by gender? Third, what might life course approaches to these issues gain from engaging both with historical- and gender-inflected analysis? The article draws on our wider analysis of the life courses and life chances of 400 adults who passed through the early youth justice and care systems as children in the northwest of England from the 1860s to the 1920s. These systems were closely interlinked. Within that, the article focuses on the experiences of a subgroup sent to a more care-oriented institution. It compares their collective outcomes with those of the wider group and within-group by gender. It offers a selection of case studies of women’s lives before and after care to highlight the value of, and challenges involved in, undertaking gender analysis in life course research of this kind

Paths to adulthood and advances in anonymisation

This last issue of Volume 9 has cross-cutting contributions from a number of countries in Europe ­– including (still) the UK – and North America, and from sociology, demography, epidemiology and statistics. The empirical research is mainly confined to people early to mid adulthood from age 18 to 40. Readers interested in childhood and later life may nevertheless find the articles of relevance, and all should take note of the issue of data privacy. This introduction tries to bring out some common themes

Living Situations and Social Support in the Era of Extended Foster Care: A View from the U.S.

Social support is important for promoting resiliency and decreasing the occurrence and impact of negative life events as foster youth transition to adulthood. However, the types and amount of support may vary by where youth are placed. Additionally, it is not known whether state policies that extend the foster care age limit beyond age 18 are associated with greater social support. This paper examines how types and sources of social support vary by youths’ foster care placement and foster care status at age 19. Data come from the CalYOUTH Study, a representative sample of youths in California foster care where 611 participants were interviewed at ages 17 and 19. Information was gathered on youths’ perceived adequacy of three types of social support (emotional, tangible, and advice/guidance) and their sources of support (family, peers, and professionals). Overall, a third or more of the particpants reported having inadequate support in each of the three support domains, which calls for renewed efforts to ensure that foster youth have adults they can rely on as they transition to adulthood regardless of where they happen to be living. After controlling for prior social support and other characteristics, youth in foster homes with relatives had less contact with professionals than did youth in other placements. In-care youth were more likely than out-of-care youth to have adequate advice and tangible support and to identify a professional as a support. These findings provide early support for the role of extended care in linking youth to important social resources

Mental health problems and social disadvantages as predictors of teenage parenthood: A register-based population study of Swedish boys and girls

It has been argued that the relationship between mental health and teenage parenthood might be explained by the connection of social disadvantage and mental health. This paper embraces a life course approach and investigates the link between social and health disadvantages and teenage parenthood in Sweden, in attempt to disentangle experiences of early mental health problems from other social disadvantage factors. The research questions were explored through random intercept logistic models for panel data. The data for this study consists of all individuals born in Sweden between 1989 and 1994, drawn from Swedish population registers. The final models comprised 680,848 individuals who were followed throughout their teenage years. The results show that mental health problems in youth function as an independent predictor of teenage parenthood, even after adjusting for other social disadvantage factors. This observation applies for both boys and girls. Activities aimed at increasing the perceived life opportunities of youth and giving significance to life may be considered as means of preventing teenage parenthood through policy. This study suggests that such activities could be extended to include teenagers with mental health problems

Does the association between teen births or abortions and educational attainment vary by socioeconomic background in Finland?

Teen mothers often have a lower socioeconomic position as adults than other women due to selection, opportunity costs of childbearing, or both. Few studies examine whether that is the case after an induced abortion as well. Also, few studies explore whether the strength of the association between teen pregnancy and adulthood socioeconomic position differs by family background. This study uses Finnish register data of 53,252 women born between 1975 and 1979 to examine with logistic regression whether the likelihood of having tertiary education depends differently on teen birth and abortion experiences by parental socioeconomic position. I also control for and report whether having a partner providing childcare helps mitigate the negative association between teen motherhood and education. The results show teen mothers had lower odds than those who aborted to have tertiary education, and both groups were behind those with no teen pregnancy. These groups’ education did not vary statistically significantly by family background, although the gap in the probability of having tertiary education between teen mothers and those with no teen pregnancy among the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds was 43%-points, and only 27%-points among the highest. Teen mothers with and without a partner had similar probabilities of having tertiary education (8– 11%). Those who had an abortion and subsequently separated from their partner, however, had similar probability of having tertiary education as teen mothers (13%), although others who had an abortion had a much higher probability (20%). Selection shapes these relationships. Survey and register data should be combined to study these associations using methods of causal inference

Adult outcomes of youths who have spent time in a judicial treatment institution in the Netherlands

Youths who have spent time in residential care may experience difficulties when making the transition to adulthood. This study examines adult outcomes of youths (N=251) who spent time in a Dutch judicial treatment institution. Moreover, the study investigates to what extent background characteristics and patterns in adult criminal behaviour are related to outcomes in adulthood. The study uses data from the 17up study, a longitudinal study following institutionalised youths into adulthood. Information on background characteristics is available from the youths’ treatment files. Outcomes in a variety of life domains, including the domains of housing, employment, family formation and health, have been assessed at a follow-up interview with respondents when they were, on average, 34 years old. Official data on criminal behaviour is used to reconstruct respondents’ criminal careers. The findings show that many young people who were placed in a judicial treatment institution during their youth experience difficulties in conventional life domains in adulthood, in particular in the areas of employment, mental health, and alcohol and drug abuse. Furthermore, results from a series of regression analyses and nonlinear canonical correlation analyses suggest that in general, those with chronic involvement in criminal behaviour are more likely to experience problems in multiple adult life domains. Most background characteristics are unrelated to adult outcomes. Therefore, the findings indicate that among youths with a history of institutionalisation, negative outcomes in adulthood are not so much predicted by childhood risk factors, but more so by criminal involvement in adulthood

From bad to worse? Effects of multiple adverse life course transitions on mental health

This paper examines whether the simultaneous occurrence of two or more adverse life course transitions has a stronger effect on mental health compared to the effects of the sum of each. The focus is on four life course transitions (partner loss (divorce/separation or death), death of a parent, unemployment, disability) and the data come from a large four-wave longitudinal dataset in the Netherlands (N = 4,192 respondents). There is clear evidence that negative life course transitions tend to cluster. Of the four transitions, partner loss and disability onset have the largest negative impact on mental health but unemployment also has a clear effect. There is not only additive but also interactive accumulation during the life course: one adverse event has a more negative impact on mental health when it occurs simultaneously with another. This provides evidence on the link between ‘turbulent times’ in the life course and negative mental health trajectories. We did not find evidence that effects of adverse transitions depend on education.

Volume 9, No 4

Full issue of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies 2018 Volume 9, Issue 4

A software package for the application of probabilistic anonymisation to sensitive individual-level data: a proof of principle with an example from the ALSPAC birth cohort study

Individual-level data require protection from unauthorised access to safeguard confidentiality and security of sensitive information. Risks of disclosure are evaluated through privacy risk assessments and are controlled or minimised before data sharing and integration. The evolution from ‘Micro Data Laboratory’ traditions (i.e. access in controlled physical locations) to ‘Open Data’ (i.e. sharing individual-level data) drives the development of efficient anonymisation methods and protection controls. Effective anonymisation techniques should increase the uncertainty surrounding re-identification while retaining data utility, allowing informative data analysis. ‘Probabilistic anonymisation’ is one such technique, which alters the data by addition of random noise. In this paper, we describe the implementation of one probabilistic anonymisation technique into an operational software written in R and we demonstrate its applicability through application to analysis of asthma-related data from the ALSPAC cohort study. The software is designed to be used by data managers and users without the requirement of advanced statistical knowledge