scholarly journals Drivers of Diversification in Individual Life Courses

2017 ◽  
Vol 190 (6) ◽  
pp. E132-E144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raisa Hernández-Pacheco ◽  
Ulrich K. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Individual Life ◽  
Life Courses

scholarly journals How dependent were the ‘dependent poor’? Poor relief and the life-course in Terling, Essex, 1762–1834

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRY FRENCH
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTDespite the volume of research on the Old Poor Law, only in the last two decades have detailed local studies begun to assess the impact of relief payments across the life-courses of individuals. Their conclusions have been mixed. While many have found that the rural labouring poor of southern England were increasingly frequent recipients of poor relief after the 1780s, recent studies have indicated that ‘dependence’ on relief was generally intermittent, not permanent. Based on a new dataset for the Essex village of Terling, this study sets individual life-histories within the broader chronology of change to show how young, able-bodied men and women became relief recipients much more often after 1795 than they had before.

scholarly journals Putting the spiritual into practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Von Boguslawski ◽  
Jasmine Westerlund
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Shed Light

The aim of this article is to examine how Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical ideas were reflected and put into practice in the lives of the Finnish couple Olly (Olga) Donner (1881–1956, neé Sinebrychoff) and Uno Donner (1872–1958). They encountered anthroposophy in 1913 and subsequently embraced it as the guiding principle of their lives. Through a close examination of these two people we aim to shed light on how a new worldview like anthroposophy, which was gaining followers in early twentieth-century Finland, was also a manifestation of wider changes in religious culture in Europe. Our perspective could be described as biographical in the sense that it has been characterised by Simone Lässig (2008: 11) who writes that ‘the reconstruction of individual life courses helps to discover more about the context – for example, about daily rituals, pious practices, or kinship relationship’. Thus, the biographical perspective serves as a tool for grasping how something as deeply personal as an anthroposophical worldview was understood and practised, not only by Olly and Uno Donner, but also by a larger group of people who in the early twentieth century were looking for new ways to make sense of the surrounding world.

scholarly journals Drivers of diversification in individual life courses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raisa Hernández-Pacheco ◽  
Ulrich K. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Individual Variability ◽  
Individual Heterogeneity ◽  
Fitness Components ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Structured Population ◽  
Selective Forces ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Population Entropy ◽  
Stage Composition

ABSTRACTHeterogeneity in life courses among individuals of a population influences the speed of adaptive evolutionary processes, but it is less clear how biotic and abiotic environmental fluctuations influence such heterogeneity. We investigate principal drivers of variability in sequence of stages during an individual’s life in a stage-structured population. We quantify heterogeneity by measuring population entropy, which computes the rate of diversification of individual life courses of a Markov chain. Using individual data of a primate population, we show that density regulates the stage composition of the population, but its entropy and the generating moments of heterogeneity are independent of density. This lack of influence of density on heterogeneity is neither due to low year-to-year variation in entropy nor due to differences in survival among stages, but due to differences in stage transitions. Our analysis thus shows that well-known classical ecological selective forces, such as density regulation, are not linked to potential selective forces governing heterogeneity through underlying stage dynamics. Despite evolution acting heavily on individual variability in fitness components, our understanding is poor whether observed heterogeneity is adaptive and how it evolves and is maintained. Our analysis illustrates how entropy represents a more integrated measure of diversity compared to the population structural composition, giving us new insights about the underlying drivers of individual heterogeneity within populations and potential evolutionary mechanisms.

Guilty Pleasures? Feminism and Everyday Life in the 1980s

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-158
Author(s):  
Margaretta Jolly
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Domestic Lives ◽  
Life Course Analysis

The chapter interweaves individual life course analysis with the development of feminism, exploring the homes, food, clothes and leisure enjoyed by midlife activists. Exploring municipal feminism and Women Against Pit Closures mobilisation during the miners’ strike through the stories of Valerie Wise and Betty Cook, the chapter skirts simple narratives of movement success or decline to explore the domestic lives of feminists. These could fuel activism and enable alternative life courses and families, but also show the need for rest, pleasure and privacy. Shopping too is revealed as an area of shame as well as where feminists pioneered ethical forms of consumption, particularly in sexual goods or clubs, whilst acknowledging the divisive context of Thatcher’s Britain. The chapter closes with a portrait of Barbara Jones, radical lesbian feminist, woman builder and ecological designer, whose vivid S&A interview captures feminism’s transformative effects alongside its troubled relationship to capitalism, money and the state. 150 words

scholarly journals Drivers of diversity in individual life courses: Sensitivity of the population entropy of a Markov chain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich K. Steiner ◽  
Shripad Tuljapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Markov Chain ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Selective Forces ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Population Entropy

AbstractIndividuals differ in their life courses, but how this diversity is generated, how it has evolved and how maintained is less understood. However, this understanding is crucial to comprehend evolutionary and ecological population dynamics. In structured populations, individual life courses represent sequences of stages that end in death. These sequences can be described by a Markov chain and individuals diversify over the course of their lives by transitioning through diverse discrete stages. The rate at which stage sequences diversify with age can be quantified by the population entropy of a Markov chain. Here, we derive sensitivities of the population entropy of a Markov chain to identify which stage transitions generate—or contribute—most to diversification in stage sequences, i.e. life courses. We then use these sensitivities to reveal potential selective forces on the dynamics of life courses. To do so we correlated the sensitivity of each matrix element (stage transition) with respect to the population entropy, to its sensitivity with respect to fitness λ, the population growth rate. Positive correlation between the two sensitivities would suggest that the stage transitions that selection has acted most strongly on (sensitivities with respect to λ) are also those that contributed most to the diversification of life courses. Using an illustrative example on a seabird population, the Thick-billed Murres on Coats Island, that is structured by reproductive stages, we show that the most influential stage transitions for diversification of life courses are not correlated with the most influential transitions for population growth. Our finding suggests that observed diversification in life courses is neutral rather than adaptive. We are at an early stage of understanding how individual level dynamics shape ecological and evolutionary dynamics, and many discoveries await.

scholarly journals Fair and Tender Data. The FAIRness of Four Databases With Historical Individual Life Course Data Tested

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
Lex Heerma van Voss
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Sensitive Data ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Historical Individual ◽  
Historical Life

Four databases with data on individual historical life courses are tested for FAIRness: the TRA, Umeå, HSN and IPUMS databases. All databases make their data much more Findable than they were in the original sources. But as databases, they are best findable if their name is a unique acronym, and if different sub-datasets all use that same acronym. Sensitive data have to be protected. Two databases make anonymous data sets or those only containing information on deceased individuals Accessible without any formalities, and other databases could follow this example. To increase Interoperability a large number of tools are offered by the databases. Reusability is among the raisons d’être of these databases.

The Statistical Analysis of Longitudinal Data

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-92
Author(s):  
Barry Edmonston
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Longitudinal Data ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Historical Issues ◽  
Longitudinal Examination

The volume, Lives in Transition, edited by Peter Baskerville and Kris Inwood, provides a valuable sampling of empirical research by historians using longitudinal data. It improves upon the current understanding of a variety of historical issues by focusing on different aspects and stages of individual life courses and identifying questions for further study. It demonstrates the important empirical challenges and presents a variety of substantive topics for longitudinal examination. Overall, the book’s chapters show that analysis of longitudinal data illuminates historical studies in new ways, providing insights about the factors affecting changes in individual lives.

scholarly journals Does Re-Partnering Behavior Spread Among Former Spouses?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zafer Buyukkececi
Keyword(s):  
Discrete Time ◽  
Romantic Partners ◽  
Event History ◽  
Active Network ◽  
Union Formation ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Cohabiting Couples ◽  
Life Courses

AbstractThis study focused on individuals’ re-partnering behavior following a divorce and asked whether divorcees influence each other’s new union formation. By exploiting the System of Social statistical Datasets (SSD) of Statistics Netherlands, I identified divorced dyads and examined interdependencies in their re-partnering behavior. Discrete-time event history models accounting for shared characteristics of divorcees that are likely to influence their divorce and re-partnering behavior simultaneously were estimated. Findings showed that the probability of re-partnering increased within the first two years following a former spouse’s new union formation. Further analyses focusing on formerly cohabiting couples rather than divorcees also revealed significant associations in re-partnering behavior. Following a former romantic partner’s new union formation, women were exposed to risk longer than men, due to men’s quicker re-partnering. These results were robust to the falsification tests. Overall, findings indicate that the consequences of a divorce or breakup are not limited to the incidence itself and former romantic partners remain important in each other’s life courses even after a breakup. With the increasing number of divorcees and changing family structures, it is important to consider former spouses as active network partners that may influence individual life courses.

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