Life Course Theory

Life Course Theory as a Developmental Theory traces its roots in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when three pioneering longitudinal studies in Child Development were

launched at the University of California, Berkeley: the Oakland Growth Study, the Berkeley Guidance Study and the Berkeley Growth Study. In the early 1960s the studies were extended well beyond childhood in an e↵ort to tie together a central premise: the notion that changing lives alter development. It is worth mentioning, that early research e↵orts to develop the theory followed the life pathways of the same groups of children in all three Berkeley studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s; see Elder [54] (1998). Life Course Theory as a Developmental Theory proposes a new research paradigm in how we think about and study human lives. More precisely, it proposes a new framework in an e↵ort to study the dynamics between human lives and historical time, timing within lives, linked or interdependent lives, and human agency in making choices. Hence it can naturally be considered as an interdisciplinary theory that incorporates ideas from economics, psychology, history, sociology, demography and biology. The central notion of the theory is that of the life course, a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time (Elder and Giele [73], 1998).

There are four key principles that define the research paradigm of the Life Course Theory. First is the interplay between human lives and historical time. Sociologists and social historians in studying individual and family life trajectories noted that per- sons born in di↵erent years face di↵erent historical worlds, with di↵erent options and constraints. For example, Elder’s research [54] (1974, 1998) on children and the Great Depression found that the life course trajectories of the cohort that were very young at the time of the economic downturn were more seriously a↵ected by family hardship than the cohort that were in middle childhood and late adolescence at the time. Second is timing in lives. Broadly speaking, in a social context, the notion of timing refers to the incidence, duration, sequence of roles and to relevant expectations and beliefs based on age. For example, marriage may be relatively early or late within certain age norms according to specific demographic patterns. Third is linked or interdependent lives. A common sub-classification in studying linked or interdependent lives is that

of links between family members and links with the wider world. Certainly, parents’ and young people’s lives are linked. For example, Elder’s longitudinal studies research of the Great Depression found that as parents experienced great economic pressures, they faced a greater risk of depressed feelings and marital discord. As a result, their ability to nurture their children was compromised, and young people were more likely to face emotional distress, academic trouble and problematic behaviour (Elder [54], 1974, 1998). Links with the wider world refer to the interdependence between individ- uals and families with other groups and collectivities. Fourth there is human agency in making choices. It refers to the capacity of the individual to make choices. One may argue that this is the most controversial of all four dimensions that comprise the Life Course Theory. Clearly, human agency has limits. For example, individuals’ choices are constrained by the structural and cultural arrangements of a given historical era, but individual choices and intentional actions may influence outcomes over and above other conditions.

The research paradigm proposed by Life Course Theory has many advantages over traditional theories of human development. It provides a multidimensional conceptual framework to study a person, under a unified context incorporating social, cultural and historical factors. It encourages attention to the impact of historical and social change on human behaviour, which seems particularly important in a rapidly changing society such as ours. It also gives emphasis on linked lives, and as a result it allows focus on in- tergeneration relationships and the interdependence of lives. At the same time, taking into account the human agency, the life course perspective avoids the strict determin- istic approaches taken by earlier theories of human development. A weakness of this the Life Course theory is that it does not o↵er a description of the pathways through which historical, environmental, social and cultural experiences interact with young peoples cognitive and social development (Miller [129], 2010). Additionally, the Life Course theory does not provide the tools to test its assertions from a quantitative point of view. Life Course theory incorporates such di↵erential contexts that raises several

technical difficulties in following existing models to develop a quantitative approach to test its assumptions.

Despite the methodological difficulties encountered, a life course approach can be adopted in explaining neighbourhood deprivation e↵ects on young people’s outcomes. This approach requires research to take into consideration the social, cultural and his- torical context in which a young person lives and its dynamic influence and interaction with the personality, abilities and attitudes of the individual. Young people who live in high Crime areas have di↵erent social, cultural and environmental experiences com- pared to young people who live in low Crime areas. These experiences in turn might influence young people’s academic achievement, aspirations, attitudes and educational and employment outcomes. Additionally, according to the life course theory, environ- mental influences have a di↵erent impact at di↵erent ages in determining outcomes. Therefore, it would be important to measure neighbourhood e↵ects at an early age to check their influence on early adolescence. The concept of linked lives needs to be con- sidered as well. For example parents who live in high crime areas might face financial hardship which could a↵ect relationships in the home, increase stress levels and parent- ing practices which a↵ect the development of young people. Finally the theory posits a role of the individual in making choices. For example the structural and cultural setting of deprived areas could a↵ect young people’s attitudes and fear of crime and influence negatively their choices about their educational and employment direction. Given the difficulties encountered in testing quantitatively the Life Course theory and the e↵ects of di↵erent structural and cultural settings on young people’s outcomes, this study employs the counterfactual framework and propensity score matching. Match- ing, as a method, is becoming a widely used technique to address the process of causal exposure as well as the limitations of observational data. The core of the counterfactual model, which is important for this study, lies on the premise that each individual in

the population of young people at 18 19 can be exposed to two alternate states of a

the two states, which could potentially a↵ect a young person being in NEET status or not. Each young person could have a potential outcome under each of the two states, even though they can be observed only in a high or a low crime score area.

3.2.2 Ecological systems theories and young people’s development