TY - JOUR
T1 - The Family Life Course and Health
T2 - Partnership, Fertility Histories, and Later-Life Physical Health Trajectories in Australia
AU - O’Flaherty, Martin
AU - Baxter, Janeen
AU - Haynes, Michele
AU - Turrell, Gavin
N1 - Funding Information:
This article uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this article, however, are those of the author and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute. The authors wish to thank Melanie Spallek for assistance with R code for the sequence analysis, and Bill Martin and the anonymous reviewers at Demography for their insightful comments and criticism.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Population Association of America.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - Life course perspectives suggest that later-life health reflects long-term social patterns over an individual’s life: in particular, the occurrence and timing of key roles and transitions. Such social patterns have been demonstrated empirically for multiple aspects of fertility and partnership histories, including timing of births and marriage, parity, and the presence and timing of a marital disruption. Most previous studies have, however, addressed particular aspects of fertility or partnership histories singly. We build on this research by examining how a holistic classification of family life course trajectories from ages 18 to 50, incorporating both fertility and partnership histories, is linked to later-life physical health for a sample of Australian residents. Our results indicate that long-term family life course trajectories are strongly linked to later-life health for men but only minimally for women. For men, family trajectories characterized by early family formation, no family formation, an early marital disruption, or high fertility are associated with poorer physical health. Among women, only those who experienced both a disrupted marital history and a high level of fertility were found to be in poorer health.
AB - Life course perspectives suggest that later-life health reflects long-term social patterns over an individual’s life: in particular, the occurrence and timing of key roles and transitions. Such social patterns have been demonstrated empirically for multiple aspects of fertility and partnership histories, including timing of births and marriage, parity, and the presence and timing of a marital disruption. Most previous studies have, however, addressed particular aspects of fertility or partnership histories singly. We build on this research by examining how a holistic classification of family life course trajectories from ages 18 to 50, incorporating both fertility and partnership histories, is linked to later-life physical health for a sample of Australian residents. Our results indicate that long-term family life course trajectories are strongly linked to later-life health for men but only minimally for women. For men, family trajectories characterized by early family formation, no family formation, an early marital disruption, or high fertility are associated with poorer physical health. Among women, only those who experienced both a disrupted marital history and a high level of fertility were found to be in poorer health.
KW - Fertility
KW - Health
KW - Life course
KW - Marriage
KW - Sequence analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84969218965&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s13524-016-0478-6
DO - 10.1007/s13524-016-0478-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 27189018
AN - SCOPUS:84969218965
SN - 0070-3370
VL - 53
SP - 777
EP - 804
JO - Demography
JF - Demography
IS - 3
ER -