Moral and social antecedents of young adults’ attitudes toward social inequality and social justice values

In light of growing social stratification, there have been calls to better understand the developmental antecedents of attitudes and values related to social inequality. In this study we predicted attitudes toward social inequality and social justice values from moral and social antecedents in a representative sample of Swiss adolescents (N = 1,258) at 15 (Time 1), 18 (Time 2), and 21 years of age (Time 3). We assessed children’s sympathy and morals in the context of individuals’ decision-making and anticipation of emotions in moral dilemmas. Social-contextual factors included relationship quality, which was assessed by the quality of one’s closest friendship and education level. Adolescents who reported higher friendship quality and sympathy showed stronger attitudes toward social inequality later. Interestingly, adolescents’ own education level at age 18 positively predicted attitudes toward social inequality at age 21 above and beyond parent education level, but only marginally at a younger age. Social justice values at age 18 were predicted by sympathy and the anticipation of moral emotions at age 15, and social justice values at age 21 were associated with sympathy at age 18. Results are discussed with respect to the potential significance of morality and social-contextual factors in the development of attitudes toward social inequality and social justice values in early adulthood.

Wage differentials after a career break: A latent growth model on Belgian register data

This article analyses income differentials after re-entry into the labour market between people who have had a career break and people who have not by applying latent growth modelling to a sample of longitudinal register data. The results suggest that when comparing the incomes of those who return from a break with those who did not have a break there are significant initial income differences to the disadvantage of the former. Moreover, the income differentials between men were greater than those between women. In addition, significant additional income growth was found after the break for women but not for men. The evidence suggests that such leave is more socially acceptable for women but leads to significant negative income differentials among men

Getting better all the time? Selective attrition and compositional changes in longitudinal and life-course studies

Longitudinal surveys are valuable tools for investigating health and social outcomes across the life course. In such studies, selective mortality leads to changes in the social composition of the sample, but little is known about how selective survey participation affects the sample composition, in addition to the selective mortality. In the present paper, we followed a Swedish cohort sample over six waves 1968–2011. For each wave we recalculated the distribution of baseline characteristics in the sample among i) the sample still alive and ii) the sample still alive and with complete follow-up. The results show that the majority of the compositional changes in the cohort were modest and driven mainly by mortality. However, for some characteristics, class in particular, the selection was considerable and in addition, was substantially compounded by survey non-participation. We suggest that sample selections should be taken into account when interpreting the results of longitudinal studies, in particular when researching social inequalities.

Editorial: Common threads in a rich tapestry

Editorial for Volume 8 Issue

Adverse childhood experiences, non-response and loss to follow-up: Findings from a prospective birth cohort and recommendations for addressing missing data

Adverse childhood experiences have wide-ranging impacts on population health but are inherently difficult to study. Retrospective self-report is commonly used to identify exposure but adult population samples may be biased by non-response and loss to follow-up. We explored the implications of missing data for research on child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, parental mental illness and parental substance use. Using 15 waves of data collected over 28 years in a population-based birth cohort, the Australian Temperament Project, we examined the relationship between retrospective self-reports of adverse childhood experiences and parent- and cohort-responsiveness at other time points. We then compared prevalence estimates under complete case analysis, inverse probability-weighting using baseline auxiliary variables, multiple imputation using baseline auxiliary variables, multiple imputation using auxiliary variables from all waves, and multiple imputation using additional measures of participant responsiveness. Retrospective self-reports of adverse childhood experiences were strongly associated with non-response by both parents and cohort members at all observable time points. Biases in complete case estimates appeared large and inverse probability-weighting did not reduce them. Multiple imputation increased the estimated prevalence of any adverse childhood experiences from 30.0% to 36.9% with only baseline auxiliary variables, 39.7% with a larger set of auxiliary variables and 44.0% when measures of responsiveness were added. Close attention must be paid to missing data and non-response in research on adverse childhood experiences as data are unlikely to be missing at random. Common approaches may greatly underestimate their prevalence and compromise analysis of their causes and consequences. Sophisticated techniques using a wide range of auxiliary variables are critical in this field of research, including, where possible, measures of participant responsiveness

Longitudinal methods for life course research: A comparison of sequence analysis, latent class growth models, and multi-state event history models for studying partnership transitions

This paper qualitatively compares and contrasts three methods that are useful for life course researchers; the more widely used sequence analysis, and the promising but less often applied latent class growth models, and multi-state event history models. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are highlighted by applying them to the same empirical problem. Using data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey, changes in the partnership status of women born between 1955 and 1964 are modelled, with education as the primary covariate of interest. We show that latent class growth models and multi-state event history models are a useful addition to life course researchers’ methodological toolkit and that these methods can address certain research questions better than the more commonly applied sequence analysis or simple event history analysis

Editorial: Life course research around the world

intrduction to Volume 8 Issue 4

Psychiatric diagnoses as grounds for disability pension among former child welfare clients

This study used the 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort, which included all children born in Finland in 1987 (N=59,476), to investigate psychiatric diagnoses as grounds for disability pensions (DPs) among child welfare clients and explored the background factors associated with such diagnoses. Descriptive statistics show that DP is substantially more common among child welfare clients than among other children.Logistic regressions revealed that the factors most strongly related to psychiatric diagnoses among girls were mother’s somatic DP, child protection history, and parental social assistance. Psychiatric diagnoses among boys were most strongly related to mother’s psychiatric DP, child protection history, and parental divorce.The factors related to DP among girls included child protection history, father’s psychiatric DP, father’s somatic DP, and parental social assistance. DP among boys was related to child protection history, mother’s psychiatric DP, parental social assistance, father’s somatic DP, and father’s psychiatric care in specialised hospitals.A child welfare history that includes out-of-home care indicates that there were severe problems in the home environment during upbringing. Detailed investigations should therefore be undertaken, such as examining the role of mediating and moderating factors, including the ability of social and educational services to ameliorate the effects of challenging childhood conditions

What young English people do once they reach school-leaving age: A cross-cohort comparison for the last 30 years

This paper examines how young people’s early transitions into the labour market have changed between cohorts born in 1958, 1970, 1980, and 1990. We use sequence analysis to characterise transition patterns and identify three distinct pathways in all cohorts. An ‘Entering the Labour Market’ group has declined significantly in size (from 91% in the earliest cohort, to 37% in the most recent), an ‘Accumulating Human Capital’ group has grown in its place (from 4% to 51%), but also a ‘Potential Cause for Concern’ group has grown alongside this, reaching 12% in the most recent cohort. These trends appear to reflect behavioural rather than compositional changes. Females and those who are from a non-white ethnic background have gone from being more likely to be in the ‘Potential Cause for Concern’ group, to being less likely. Coming from a low socio-economic status background has remained a strong predictor of having a transition of this type across all four cohorts. These early transitions are important, not least since we show they are highly predictive of longer-term outcomes

The consequences of contact with the criminal justice system for health in the transition to adulthood

A rapidly growing literature has documented the adverse social, economic and, recently, health impacts of experiencing incarceration in the United States. Despite the insights that this work has provided in consistently documenting the deleterious effects of incarceration, little is known about the specific timing of criminal justice contact and early health consequences during the transition from adolescence to adulthood—a critical period in the life course, particularly for the development of poor health. Previous literature on the role of incarceration has also been hampered by the difficulties of parsing out the influence that incarceration exerts on health from the social and economic confounding forces that are linked to both criminal justice contact and health. This paper addresses these two gaps in the literature by examining the association between incarceration and health in the United States during the transition to adulthood, and by using an analytic approach that better isolates the association of incarceration with health from the multitude of confounders which could be alternatively driving this association. In this endeavor, we make use of variable-rich data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 10,785) and a non-parametric Bayesian machine learning technique- Bayesian Additive Regression Trees. Our results suggest that the experience of incarceration at this stage of the life course increases the probability of depression, adversely affects the perception of general health status, but has no effect on the probability of developing hypertension in early adulthood. These findings signal that incarceration in emerging adulthood is an important stressor that can have immediate implications for mental and general health in early adulthood, and may help to explain long lasting implications incarceration has for health across the life course.