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Event History Models for Life Course Analysis

  • Chapter
Handbook of the Life Course

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

The questions posed by life course researchers often differ in fundamental ways from those posed by sociologists, developmental psychologists, or economists (Elder, 1998; Mayer & Tuma, 1990). For example, life course researchers often focus analytic attention on transitions marking adolescence or early adulthood and the roles and statuses accompanying such transitions (Hogan & Astone, 1986; Modell, Furstenberg, & Hershberg, 1976; Shanahan, 2000). Prototypical questions along these lines include whether certain social groups experience a more rapid transition to adulthood or whether the timing of such transitions (or the duration spent in selected life course statuses) has changed for successive cohorts (Winsborough, 1980). As Mayer and Tuma (1990) note, work in this vein often implicitly conceives of social structure as arising out of individual experiences of varying duration, as opposed to alternative perspectives that see social structure in terms of collectivities of persons with particular fixed attributes (Blau, 1977), as generated from relational networks (and resulting “structural holes”) among individual actors (White, Boorman, & Breiger, 1976) or from the aggregate behavior of rational actors (Becker, 1991).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706

    Lawrence L. Wu

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  1. Lawrence L. Wu
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

    Jeylan T. Mortimer

  2. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

    Michael J. Shanahan

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Wu, L.L. (2003). Event History Models for Life Course Analysis. In: Mortimer, J.T., Shanahan, M.J. (eds) Handbook of the Life Course. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48247-2_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48247-2_22

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