Social roles as process: caregiving careers and women's health.

Is involvement in multiple roles beneficial for women's health or do the often noted health benefits of multiple roles reflect an ongoing process of role management? We address this question by looking at two roles, caregiving and employment, and by investigating changes in women's health as they move into and out of both roles. We examine changes in physical health limitations and psychological distress over a two-year period with data from a nationally representative sample of 2,929 late-midlife women. Looking first at health changes associated with caregiving, we find that psychological distress increases as women move into and continue caring for an ill or disabled person in their household. Caregiving has a weaker effect on physical health, but increases in physical limitations prompt exists from caregiving. Increases in physical limitations also appear to be greater for non-employed women, but some or all of this difference reflects selection out of the labor force for women having difficulty combining both roles. Our findings provide further evidence that care work has implications for women's health, while also suggesting a need for further attention to the ways that women actively manage problematic role combinations.

Women's caregiving and paid work: causal relationships in late midlife.

Care of an ill or disabled family member or friend is disproportionately done by women and typically is done in late midlife. Because this is-also a time in the life course when women's labor force participation peaks, many women faced with caregiving demands have to decide how to balance them with their employment. In this study we use the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) of Mature Women to examine the causal relationship between employment and caring for an ill or disabled friend or relative over a three-year period. We find that employment does not affect whether or not women start caregiving, but that women who do start are more likely to reduce employment hours or stop work. Thus, the causal relationship between employment and caregiving in late midlife is largely unidirectional, with women reducing hours to meet caregiving demands.

Family, work, and access to health insurance among mature women.

We use a life course approach to address much ignored variation in access to health insurance. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we reinterpret the role of both family and employment characteristics in shaping coverage. Mature women are more likely to be insured as wives than as workers, but that safety net is only available to married women. As a result, unmarried women are two to three times as likely to be uninsured or to rely on public programs such as Medicaid. And because they are significantly less likely to be married to a covered worker, Black women are two to three times more likely to be uninsured or to rely on public programs. Given rising instability in employment and marital status across the life course, stable health insurance coverage can only be attained by universal rather than employment-based or family-based schemes.

Worklives and longevity: insights from a life course perspective.

Recent research on work stress has focused heavily on how the demands and rewards of single jobs influence health or mortality, but has left the implications of broader patterns of worklives largely uninvestigated. Life history data from the Stanford-Terman study is used in this research to explore patterns of career mobility among middle-class men and the implications of these patterns for their longevity. While relatively few men in this study experienced a period in which they moved through a series of unrelated jobs, those who did had a higher mortality risk. Similarly, men who progressed early in their careers but then remained stable in later periods tended to be at a greater risk than those who progressed in both time periods. Health and lifestyle measures were also significant predictors of mortality risk, but did not account for the observed impact of worklife patterns on mortality. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the work-health relationship.

Work careers in men's later years: transitions, trajectories, and historical change.

Recent studies portray dramatic changes in the retirement experience of American men. To investigate these changes further, we analyzed life history data on two birth cohorts of men in the Stanford-Terman study, a longitudinal project that dates back to 1922. First, patterns and age of retirement are described for the whole sample, then cohort differences in retirement are examined more closely. We found that most of the sample either retired gradually (46%) or exited in a single transition (30%). Consistent with earlier research, the younger cohort retired at earlier ages while also being less likely to retire in a single transition. Though seeming to be elements of a general change in the life course, the two processes (timing of retirement and type of late-life career) are influenced by different factors. We discuss this development in terms of its implications for late-life careers and aging.

Talent, history, and the fulfillment of promise.

Life course studies are a flourishing enterprise across the social sciences and humanities, particularly since the 1960s, but the historical roots of this work extend back at least to the turn of the century (Elder 1985; Sorensen et al. 1986). The new era is distinguished by a rapidly growing number of longitudinal samples as well as by innovative techniques for collecting and analyzing life histories. Most distinctive of the new work is its consciousness of the interplay between lives and times. To understand life trajectories one must consider the social changes underway. The events, continuities, and transformations of a changing world shape the pathways of aging. This research explores the long-term consequences of one era of social change in particular (World War II and the preceding decade of hard times) for the life experiences and career achievements of men who lived through that period. Using the data archives of the oldest longitudinal study still active in the United States (Terman 1925), we assess the career achievements of the men (born 1904-1917) in relation to cohort membership, social origins, and wartime mobilization. Through different opportunities, resources, and support, the life stage of these men in the 1930s and 40s shaped the distinctive impact of historical circumstances on their accomplishments. All of the men are members of the Stanford-Terman study, which began in 1922 with more than 800 males and has continued across 11 additional data waves up to 1986.