scholarly journals Educational Trajectories and Health over the Life Course: A Role for the DSBN Academy?

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Nicole Etherington

Research demonstrates that despite post-secondary expansion, there are still vast socioeconomic differences in educational attainment. Educational attainment can have a tremendous impact on the life course in terms of income, employment, and perhaps most significantly, health. Recognizing these issues, the Niagara region opened the DSBN Academy in September 2011. The DSBN Academy, the first school of its kind in Canada, offers social and academic programming designed to encourage its students to not only graduate from high school, but also, to become the first in their family to pursue post-secondary education. From a life course perspective, this paper assesses the relationship between education and health followed by an examination of the primary processes of cumulative advantage and disadvantage involved in producing variation in educational trajectories, which in turn impact health outcomes. I then evaluate the role of the DSBN Academy as a potential strategy to facilitate the completion of higher education by working-class students, and accordingly, to improve their health outcomes. Through analyzing the Academy, I argue that while the school has the potential to be a turning point in the lives of its students, it also risks committing a form of Bourdieu’s symbolic violence. That is, it enforces middle-class ideals of education and good health as both desirable and indicators of success. Consequently, this paper raises a fundamental question in the study of social inequality, namely, how sociologists can work toward ameliorating inequality without perpetuating the symbolic violence we continually fight against.Les recherches démontrent que, malgré le développement de l’enseignement postsecondaire, il existe encore de grandes différences socio-économiques en matière de niveau d’études. Le niveau d’études peut avoir un impact énorme dans un parcours de vie en termes de revenus, d’emploi, et peut-être plus important encore, de santé. Conscient de ces enjeux, la région du Niagara a ouvert la DSBN Academy en septembre 2011. La DSBN Academy , la première école du genre au Canada, offre des programmes sociaux et des programmes d’études conçus pour encourager ses élèves à non seulement obtenir leur diplôme d'études secondaires, mais également à devenir les premiers de leur famille à poursuivre des études postsecondaires. Dans la perspective d’une trajectoire de vie, cette étude évalue la relation entre l'éducation et la santé suivie d'un examen des principaux processus des avantages et désavantages cumulatifs liés qui jouent un rôle dans la variation du parcours scolaire, ce qui à son tour a des impacts sur l’état de santé. J'ai ensuite évalué le rôle de la DSBN Academy; le fait de l’intégrer peut-être une stratégie possible pour faciliter l'achèvement de l'enseignement supérieur par les étudiants de la classe ouvrière et, par conséquent, améliorer leur état de santé. Mon analyse de l'Académie me permet de soutenir que, même si l'école peut représenter un tournant dans la vie de ses élèves, elle risque aussi de commettre une forme de violence symbolique telle que celle définie par Bourdieu. Autrement dit, cela favorise les idéaux de la classe moyenne en matière d’éducation et de bonne santé comme étant à la fois souhaitable et indicateurs de succès. Par conséquent, ce document soulève une question fondamentale dans l'étude des inégalités sociales, à savoir, comment les sociologues peuvent chercher à estomper l'inégalité sans perpétuer la violence symbolique contre laquelle nous continuons de nous battre. 

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek M. Griffith, PhD

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To consider how manhood is a key social determinant of minority men’s health.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>This commentary explicates how manhood intersects with other determinants of health to shape minority men’s stress responses, health behaviors and health outcomes across the life course.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Manhood, which perpetu­ally needs to be proven, is an aspirational identity that is defined by the intersection of age, race/ethnicity and other identities. Mi­nority men seek to and successfully embody US-cultural and ethnic-specific aspects of manhood in their daily lives by engaging in behaviors that constantly reaffirm their gen­der identity through a complex internal and social calculus that varies by intra-personal characteristics and context. Manhood and health are relational constructs that highlight how the salience of masculinities are shaped by perceived and actual social norms and expectations. A life course perspective adds a framework for considering how some gendered beliefs, goals and behaviors change over time while others remain static. Three life course frameworks highlight dif­ferent mechanisms through which minority men’s life experiences and physiological and behavioral responses to gendered social norms, beliefs and expectations become embodied as premature mortality and other health outcomes over the life course.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Manhood represents an impor­tant lens to understand how minority men’s identities, goals and priorities affect their health, yet the role of manhood in minority men’s health is understudied and under­developed. To achieve health equity, it is critical to consider how manhood shapes minority men’s lives and health across the life course, and to address how man­hood affects gendered and non-gendered mechanisms and pathways that explain minority men’s health over time. <em>Ethn Dis. </em>2015;25(3):287-293.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110417
Author(s):  
Eric Grodsky ◽  
Catherine Doren ◽  
Koit Hung ◽  
Chandra Muller ◽  
John Robert Warren

We ask whether patterns of racial ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in educational attainment are amplified or attenuated when we take a longer view of educational careers. We propose a model of staged advantage to understand how educational inequalities evolve over the life course. Distinct from cumulative advantage, staged advantage asserts that inequalities in education ebb and flow over the life course as the population at risk of making each educational transition changes along with the constraints they confront in seeking more education. Results based on data from the 2014 follow up of the sophomore cohort of High School and Beyond offer partial support for our hypotheses. The educational attainment process was far from over for our respondents as they aged through their 30s and 40s: More than 6 of 10 continued their formal training during this period, and 4 of 10 earned an additional credential. Patterns of educational stratification at midlife became more pronounced in some ways as women pulled further ahead of men in their educational attainments and parental education (but not income), and high school academic achievement continued to shape educational trajectories at the bachelor’s degree level and beyond. However, African Americans gained on whites during this life phase through continued formal (largely academic) training and slightly greater conditional probabilities of graduate or professional degree attainment; social background fails to predict earning an associate’s degree. These results, showing educational changes and transitions far into adulthood, have implications for our understanding of the complex role of education in stratification processes.


Author(s):  
C. L. Comolli ◽  
L. Bernardi ◽  
M. Voorpostel

AbstractInformed by the life course perspective, this paper investigates whether and how employment and family trajectories are jointly associated with subjective, relational and financial wellbeing later in life. We draw on data from the Swiss Household Panel which combines biographical retrospective information on work, partnership and childbearing trajectories with 19 annual waves containing a number of wellbeing indicators as well as detailed socio-demographic and social origin information. We use sequence analysis to identify the main family and work trajectories for men and women aged 20–50 years old. We use OLS regression models to assess the association between those trajectories and their interdependency with wellbeing. Results reveal a joint association between work and family trajectories and wellbeing at older age, even net of social origin and pre-trajectory resources. For women, but not for men, the association is also not fully explained by proximate (current family and work status) determinants of wellbeing. Women’s stable full-time employment combined with traditional family trajectories yields a subjective wellbeing premium, whereas childlessness and absence of a stable partnership over the life course is associated with lower levels of financial and subjective wellbeing after 50 especially in combination with a trajectory of weak labour market involvement. Relational wellbeing is not associated with employment trajectories, and only weakly linked to family trajectories among men.


Incarceration ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 263266632198901
Author(s):  
Marguerite Schinkel ◽  

This article takes a life-course perspective to the meaning of persistent short-term imprisonment and introduces the significance of ‘penal careers’. Examining a total of 62 interviews with men and women in Scotland with long careers of (progression through) criminal punishment, it uses to the concept of belonging as a lens to interpret their experiences. While some participants already felt early on in their career that they belonged in prison because of their shared characteristics with other prisoners, the repetition of imprisonment meant that they increasingly felt displaced from life outside and saw life in prison as ‘easier’ and ‘safer’. Nevertheless, looking back on their many sentences, they felt their cumulative meaning was ‘a waste of life’. The article concludes by considering steps towards tackling the conditions that create this sense of belonging in a place of punishment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 692 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Fred Wulczyn

To understand what placement outside of one’s home means to the young people involved, we must understand foster care from a life course perspective. I analyze young people’s experiences in foster care from this perspective, accounting for when foster care happens, how long it lasts, and what happens when foster care placements end. I show that the population of children coming into foster care is younger and less urban than it was 20 years ago. I also show reliable measures of exposure to foster care over the life course. Children who enter care early in life are the children who spend the largest proportion of their childhood in foster care—a fact that rarely weighs on the policymaking process. We know very little about state and local variation in foster care placement rates, not to mention the influence of social services, the courts, foster parents, and caseworkers over foster children, so I close by arguing investment in research should be a clear policy priority.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S537-S537
Author(s):  
Brianne M Stanback

Abstract Rhetorical inquires have shown connections between representation and power, workplace fashion and development of ethos, and the rhetoric of glamour through women’s fashion and dress. One element absent from that conversation is how the life course, which typically differs for women because of existing power structures advantaging men, may impact the experience of women as they age, their choice of dress, and the rhetorical implications of those decisions. To explore dress and rhetoric from a life course perspective, this project traces the evolution of Serena Williams’ work apparel across her professional tennis career to the catsuit worn at the 2018 French Open, which is the focus of the project. Press reports on the 2018 catsuit by Nike, New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Business Insider, BBC Sport, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, interviews given by Williams, and the television documentary, Becoming Serena, will be analyzed for their treatment of Williams’ work attire and the life course. Responses to the catsuit emphasize attitudes about gender, race, and class, either discounting or ignoring the life course implications such as motherhood and changes in health status. Despite professional success, responses about the catsuit may reflect that Williams faces the same jeopardies, and invisibility, common to many women as they age, and the rhetorical perspective provides new methodological and pedagogical possibilities for instruction in aging.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Janneke Van't Klooster

<p>Violence has serious implications for both the victim and the wider community. The current adult rehabilitation programmes accept violent offenders ranged from 20 years and older. This age range could have serious rehabilitation consequences, as a twenty year olds violence and violence related goals may differ substantially to a 70 year old. For this reason an understanding of the development of violence and violence related goals can aide rehabilitation and punitive policies. A review of recent research highlights there are many methodological and empirical gaps in the development of violence whereby the current research aimed to assuage this issue. The current research used grounded theory to develop a model on the development of violence over the life-course. For this research twelve men currently incarcerated at Rimutaka Prison in a violence rehabilitation unit were interviewed. This method developed two models. The “Influences on violence development” model outlines how environment and personal choices had an impact on the development of violence. The “development of violence” model outlines the increasing severity and frequency of violence over time, and the increasing complexity of violence related goals. This model is nested within the influences on violence development model. Comparing the current models to Loeber et al's (1993) pathways model, and Sampson and Laub's life-course perspective on offending, has found support for both models. Thus this model's theoretical value lies within its ability to draw together other areas of research and provide a holistic understanding of both how and why violence develops. One implication of these models is the understanding of the varying influences of environment on violence, upon both different individuals and different ages. This implies that rehabilitation should perhaps follow a more individual based focus. There are many limitations to the research, the most salient one being lack of saturation in the model and low sample size.</p>


2013 ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Eric D. Widmer ◽  
Manuela Schicka ◽  
Michčle Ernst Stahli ◽  
Jean-Marie LeGoff ◽  
René Levy

This study examines how the work trajectories of women and men after childbirth and their subjective evaluation influence conjugal love. Data are drawn from the study, «Social Stratification, Cohesion and Conflict in Contemporary Families» (Widmer et al., 2003). The results show that an interruption of labour force participation increases the risk of feeling less in love for women, especially if the interruption is perceived as a sacrifice. Women's feelings of love also depend on the way in which their male partners consider their own work trajectories. Men's feelings of love are much less sensitive to their own and their partners' work trajectories. The results are discussed within the life course perspective.


Circulation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 137 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marialaura Bonaccio ◽  
Augusto Di Castelnuovo ◽  
Simona Costanzo ◽  
Mariarosaria Persichillo ◽  
Chiara Cerletti ◽  
...  

Introduction: A life course approach has been suggested as the most appropriated to establish the actual impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on health outcomes. Hypothesis: We assessed the hypothesis that SES trajectories from childhood to adulthood are useful to better evaluate the role of SES towards mortality risk in a large general population-based cohort. Methods: Longitudinal analysis on 22,194 subjects recruited in the general population of the Moli-sani study, Italy (2005-2010). Educational attainment (low/high) and SES in adulthood (measured by a score including occupational social class, housing and overcrowding, and dichotomized as low/high) were used to define four possible trajectories both in low and high SES in childhood (age of 8). Hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated by multivariable Cox regression and competing risk models. Results: Over a median follow-up of 8.3 years (182,924 person-years), 1155 all-cause, of which 414 cardiovascular (CVD), deaths were ascertained. In the group with low SES in childhood, as opposed to those stably low (low education and low SES in adulthood), an upward in both educational attainment and material factors in adulthood was associated with lower risk of both all-cause (HR=0.64; 95%CI 0.52-0.79; Table) and CVD mortality (HR=0.62; 0.43-0.88), respectively. Subjects with high childhood SES experienced an increased risk of total and CVD death in absence of higher educational attainment despite a higher SES in adulthood (HR=1.47; 1.04-2.07 and HR=1.75;1.00-3.05, respectively) as compared to the group with both high education and high SES in adulthood. Conclusions: In conclusion, for individuals with low SES in childhood, an upward of both educational attainment and material factors over the life course is associated with lower risk of total and CVD death. In advantaged groups in childhood, lack of a higher educational attainment, rather than material factors, over the life course appears to be unfavourably associated with survival.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document