Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 22;14(2):e0212400. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212400. eCollection 2019.
Life-courses describe people's activities from the cradle to the grave. Because life-courses are typically complex, models are used to simplify their description. The most commonly used model is tripartite, representing lives in subsequent periods of education, work, and retirement. However, researchers criticize this model as limited in the activities considered, overly simplistic in the activity sequence, and blind to variation between life-courses. This article explores working age life-courses, which typically show high diversity. Multichannel sequence and cluster analyses are conducted on people's activities from age 15 to 65. Data stem from the life-history interviews of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, capturing cohorts born before 1945. Findings show that three out of four working age life-courses are in line with the tripartite model. This share is particularly high among men, the cohort born 1935 to 1944, and in Northern and Eastern Europe. In contrast, a considerable share of women spent their working age on homemaking, especially women born before 1935, and those living in Southern Europe. Finally, a smaller number of men spent their working age on paid work, followed by a period of illness or of non-employment. The working age life-course patterns identified are used to develop alternative life-course models. However, for a parsimonious solution, the use of two models suffices. A combination of the tripartite model and the model equating middle age to homemaking captures the lives of more than nine out of ten older Europeans. The prevalence of working age life-course patterns in a population is country-specific, and the country differences align with the welfare regimes. This perspective makes working age life-courses characteristics of a society that can be used to map social inequalities at the macro-level and capture social change over time.
人生历程描述了人们从摇篮到坟墓的活动。由于人生历程通常很复杂，因此使用模型来简化其描述。最常用的模型是三分法，代表教育、工作和退休后的后续时期的生活。然而，研究人员批评该模型在所考虑的活动、活动序列过于简单以及对人生历程之间的差异视而不见方面存在局限性。本文探讨了典型地呈现出高度多样性的工作年龄人生历程。对 15 岁至 65 岁人群的活动进行了多通道序列和聚类分析。数据来源于欧洲健康、老龄化和退休调查的生活史访谈，这些数据涵盖了 1945 年前出生的队列。研究结果表明，四分之三的工作年龄人生历程符合三分法模型。这种比例在男性、1935 年至 1944 年出生的队列以及北欧和东欧中尤其高。相比之下，相当一部分女性将工作年龄用于家务劳动，尤其是 1935 年以前出生的女性以及生活在南欧的女性。最后，一小部分男性将工作年龄用于有偿工作，随后是疾病或非就业期。确定的工作年龄人生历程模式用于开发替代人生历程模型。但是，为了简化解决方案，使用两个模型就足够了。三分法模型与将中年等同于家务劳动的模型相结合，可以涵盖十分之九以上的老年欧洲人的生活。在一个人口中，工作年龄人生历程模式的流行程度因国家而异，而且国家差异与福利制度相一致。这种观点使工作年龄人生历程成为一个社会的特征，可以用于在宏观层面上绘制社会不平等，并捕捉随时间推移的社会变化。
