The Life Course in Time and Place

Glen H. Elder, Jr.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Presented ar the International Symposium on Institutions, Interrelations, Sequences: The Bremen Life-Course Approach, Bremen, Germany, September 26-28, 2001

Over 40 years ago, a leading developmentalist (Urie Bronfenbrenner, 1958) wrote a thoughtful essay entitled "Socialization and Social Class Through Time and Place." When he looked back to the 1930s, he discovered that studies of class and child-rearing made sense only when they were arrayed by date of research, their historical time. Middle class parents had become more permissive over time, while working class parents were shifting to a more punitive, restrictive regime. Bronfenbrenner had discovered the importance of context. A few years later, a similar discovery occurred in the study of lives through the work of sociologists and historians, but the insights were applied to psychological studies of lives and development.

At the time, longitudinal studies were making a name for themselves in postwar America, as early studies of children became studies of adults and then the middle aged (Elder, 1998a). When investigators followed children into their adult years, they needed to know their social pathways, whether through education, military service, or work experience and relevant role sequences. Each pathway had different developmental consequences. But little was known about them, in part because the social data were not organized in terms of life experience and its chronology.

Directed by psychologists, the pioneering longitudinal studies had little interest in social pathways, social transitions or more broadly, their institutional contexts. But longitudinal studies repeatedly posed challenges to this disinterest. For example, the lead investigators frequently came up short on explanations of why people=s behavior and psychology changed as they left childhood for the adult years or in other cases remained much the same (Elder, Modell & Parke, 1993). How did troubled youth manage to find accomplishments and meaningful relationships in adulthood? How did they turn their lives around?

We understand this shortsightedness and its consequences today after a remarkable period of advance in life course theory, method, data, and research. This is "the age of the longitudinal study" (Young, Savola, & Phelps, 1991) and of methods for collecting and analyzing such data (Elder, 1998b; Giele & Elder, 1998; (Mayer & Tuma, 1990). In theory, it is also the age of contextualism (Lerner, in press). Lives are lived in specific historical times and places, and studies of them necessarily call attention to changing cultures, populations, and institutional contexts. The life course is structured by life transitions, by linked events and transitions as trajectories, and by systems of age-grading. If historical times and places change, they change the "way people live their lives." And this change alters the course of development and aging. Likewise, changing people and populations alter social institutions and places.

Anne Colby, an American developmentalist, noted that the controversies surrounding life course initiatives are mostly forgotten, and Athe approach is widely seen as providing an accepted set of background assumptions that guide and provide common ground for research on a great number of issues across virtually all of the social sciences@ (Colby, 1998, p. ix). She concludes that "the establishment of this approach ... is one of the most important achievements of social science in the second half of the 20th century." (p. x).

The mutual relationship between changing times and places, and changing lives and development remains one of the most fundamental insights in life course study (Elder & Johnson, in press; Settersten, 1999). And it has special meaning to me through studies which began with AChildren of the Great Depression@ (Elder, 1999). Keeping this core principle in mind, I shall devote my presentation to challenges, advances, and problems in this line of work. I begin with an unfinished story that has much to do with my initial studies of these Depression children and then turn to challenges in assessing the life-course impact of our changing world.

An Unfinished Story: German AChildren of the Great Depression@

At a conference in the late 1970s, an American historian, Rudolph Binion (1976), asked what the story of AChildren of the Great Depression@ might be like if the project had focused on a corresponding cohort in Germany with urban children. In historical study, this question puts to use a counterfactual method of imagining a panel study of Depression children in Weimar Germany. No studies of this kind were carried out in Germany or in Europe, for that matter. He posed the question to prompt thinking about the implications of economically deprived youth in wartime and postwar Germany. What would their lives be like? Would they resemble in life experience American youth who had grown up in the Great Depression? If not, what would be the major differences?

One could well imagine this experience because the Great Depression hit Germany with greater force than the United States (Elder, 1999, p. 377). Moreover, though many families were hard pressed by the economic collapse, some were undoubtedly spared such a fate, as among doctors and educators. Even in the same community, there was substantial variation in the Depression experience of Germans (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, & Zeisel, 1971). When the textile mill closed in Marienthel, the town's workers lost their only employer, but women were kept busy meeting the needs of their families. However, unemployment became a way of life for the men and they quickly lost a sense of time and structure in their lives. Some became unemployed for most of the decade, while others were spared such loss. Before we explore this diversity and its possible effects, we need some background on my American study.

I examined the lives and historical context of two California birth cohorts who lived through the Great Depression: the Oakland Growth sample (birth dates, 1920-21) and the Berkeley Guidance sample (birth dates of 1928-29). Note that both cohorts lived through the Depression, World War II, and the postwar era of greater prosperity, but they encountered the Depression and war at very different times in their lives, since they were born eight years apart. I assumed that they would be influenced differentially, as a result. Table 1 shows some of these differences.

C Table 1 about here C

The Oakland study included children who were exposed to the prosperous 1920s in urban America, a period of unparalleled economic growth. They entered the Depression after a relatively secure phase of early development and avoided the scars of joblessness after high school as the country began to mobilize. By comparison, the Berkeley cohort encountered the vulnerable years of early childhood during hard times and the pressures of adolescence extended into the unsettled years of World War II. These risks were especially prominent in the lives of the boys.

Variations in income loss provided the point of departure for examining the effects of economic change on the Oakland and Berkeley study members and their families. Within the middle and working class of 1929, families were identified according to income loss (1929-33) relative to a decline in cost of living, about 25 percent over this period. Families experienced asset losses with some frequency only when income loss exceeded 40 percent of 1929 income. As such, deprived families were defined in terms of income losses above 35 percent; all other families were categorized as nondeprived. This division proved to be equally appropriate for the Berkeley sample.

The most adverse effects of the economic downturn appeared among the Berkeley boys, more so than among girls in both cohorts and the older Oakland boys. They encountered the depression crisis when they were highly dependent on parental nurturance and particularly vulnerable to family instability, emotional strain, and family conflict. Consequently, these young people were less hopeful, self-confident, and secure in adolescence. Nearly three out of four were drawn into World War II and the Korean War, and, despite the trauma of battle, most of the boys from deprived families gained personal competence through the war experiences. Entry into higher education, supportive marriages, and the challenges of military service together accounted for their developmental well-being up to the age of 40.

By comparison, the Oakland men were less exposed to developmental risks at a young age and took full advantage of college, marital, and service opportunities. Over 90 percent served in the military. For young women in the two cohorts, mother played a more protective role, although deprived girls from the Oakland cohort experienced greater social deprivations in adolescence. War work, volunteer activity, some advanced education, and especially family became their path to the adult years.

Overall, the Depression deprivation generated similar changes in the family environment of both American cohorts of males and females (division of labor, altered family relationships, and emotional-social strains), but their developmental effects varied in ways that conform to differences in life stage and gender relative to historical forces. From another vantage point, social and economic forces of the 1930s brought mothers and daughters into the family economy and intensified their relationship. Boys were drawn into work roles in the community and they experienced an accelerated pattern of social emancipation. This proved to be costly for the youngest boys who had little nurturing from mother or father when the economy collapsed.

In this brief account we see evidence of the social diversity of historical experience in addition to cohort variation B some children were exposed to economic hardship, others were spared such hardships; some grew up in the middle class, others in the working class; and the experiences of boys and girls varied greatly. How might the lives of these young people apply to an imaginary study of German youth who were also born in the 1920s but in different regions of the Weimar Republic.

Born at opposite ends of the 1920s in urban centers of Germany, these young people experienced economic and political unrest that extended across the decade. They grew to maturity during the Great Depression, the Nazi take-over, the Holocaust, and a devastating war at home. Some were no doubt involved in the Hitler youth movement and participated in large rallies around the country (Binion, 1976). With few exceptions, the boys were drawn into the military and served on the eastern and western war fronts. Many did not survive the war (possibly 25 percent or more of the males) and another 35 percent were POWs or were wounded in battle. The girls were mobilized into the medical corps or worked on the home front. How did these experiences affect the lives of survivors into the middle years and later life?

Using a retrospective life history method in a sample of West Germany, Mayer (1988) found that German men, born between 1915 and 1925, were almost universally involved in military service B about 97 percent of these cohorts. The men lost as many as nine years of their occupational career in the war, and many could not find employment afterward. They suffered high rates of imprisonment, both during and after the war, and only 75 percent survived the war.

The 1931 birth cohort (Mayer & Huinink, 1990, p. 220) also suffered widespread and profound hardship in the war. It disrupted their families and schooling, and the destroyed economy made stable employment illusory for many. Work experiences were, as a rule, mixed with spells of joblessness. Opportunities for advancement were unlikely up to the late 1940s. Even the economic boom of the 1950s and the 1960s did not fully compensate this younger Depression cohort for its war-related losses in occupational advancement.

When the war came to an end in spring 1945, Germany was divided in half, the German Democratic Republic under communist regime and West Germany with its government in Bonn. The entire country faced extreme hunger, poverty, and massive human dislocation. German men and women from the 1920s encountered privation and uncertain paths to adulthood depending on their residence, east or west. We know very little about the Depression experiences of the German cohorts, unlike the American cohorts, but the long-term impact of the war could not have been more different.

The Oakland and Berkeley men and women left the war years for a booming economy. Early deficits from the war were often turned around by advanced education and occupational opportunity. The women in these cohorts frequently worked in war industries during the war or served in some capacity within the military (Campbell, 1984). The end of World War II marked a period of domesticity and the beginning of what is known as the "baby boom." Young Germans faced years of poverty before the "economic miracle."

During his talk in the mid-1970s, Professor Binion never anticipated the reuniting of Germany over a decade later, 1989-91. And I suggest that very few of us did. For the young men and women from the 1920 cohorts, the end of a divided Germany revealed striking economic inequalities by region (Weymann, Sackman, & Wingens, 1999). This political change found stagnation and economic backwardness in East Germany, and a high level of prosperity in West Germany. Women in East Germany enjoyed full-employment and a status that had not been achieved by women in the west, but wages were relatively low, as was the standard of living. Reunification often led to the loss of their status as a worker.

Within a few months of reunification, the German Research Council launched a research program to deepen available knowledge of societal change in Germany before and after reunification (Noack, Kracke, Wild, & Hofer, 2001). Noack and his colleagues refer to reunification as "a natural experiment" of sorts and they focused on both East and West German families with adolescent sons and daughters, with emphasis on the social transformation in lives and families. The borders between East and West Germany were opened on November 9, 1989.

Within the time frame of a year, the Germany Democratic Republic had disappeared as a political entity and West German institutions had been transferred to the Eastern region of the country.

The uncertainties surrounding this dramatic change contributed to a decline of 50 percent in the East German birthrates. Young people had to face changes in the system of school and occupational socialization (Vondracek, Reitzle, & Silbereisen, 1999; see also Juang, Reitzle, & Silbereisen, 2000). The former mode of school organization had suddenly disappeared, and the new system of pathways and options was unfamiliar to East German youth. Their parents were handicapped in providing useful advice.

In their longitudinal study, Noack and his research team followed some aspects of my approach to children of the Great Depression (see above). In particular, they gave special attention to family perceptions of uncertainty as the "impression that things around you change so fast that you do not know how to get your bearings." This perception of change adversely affected the quality of family life and the psychosocial adaptation of members. Externalizing behavior became more common among young people, in addition to adverse somatic health, increased consumption of alcohol and sociopolitical intolerance.

Interestingly, these outcomes were especially common among youth in the West German sample. In a related study, economic hardship and dislocation had the most adverse mental health effect on youth in West Germany (Forkel & Silbereisen, 2001). The authors leave the reader without an explanation for this outcome. In any case, one of the larger questions is how reunification altered the transition to adulthood. Juang and Silbereisen (2001) found that East German girls have begun to close the gap with their West German counterparts on rate of family formation. Follow-ups into the late 20s and 30s will be most revealing of the lasting imprint of this dramatic change on lives in this younger cohort.

By thinking about Depression cohorts in Germany and the United States, we identify important themes for studies of the life course in time and place. One of the most important is the recognition that "time and place" matter greatly and must be considered together. The Depression experiences differed by place or social ecology. Secondly, the comparison highlights the value of long-term studies that view lives in context across the full life course, and not just at a point in time.

Dramatic socio-political change in Germany marked off distinct cultural phases for the Depression cohorts -

· the Weimar republic between the world wars,

· the Nazi mobilization relative to Depression hardtimes,

· the Second World War,

· the postwar hardtimes and monetary change,

· the postwar communist era for young adults in East Germany,

· and the reunification of the country in the 1990s.

All of these phases differentiated the lives of 60 year olds from the 1920s. At the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, programmatic studies directed by Karl Ulrich Mayer have investigated the social structural and occupational worlds of birth cohorts that extend back to the 20s. But we have much to learn about the life course effect of the complex changes they have experienced up to the present.

Within a context of political continuity, American cohorts encountered the prosperity of the 20s, the economic adversity of the 30s, the vast mobilization of the war years, and the economic growth of the postwar era. Children of the Great Depression (Elder, 1999) traced the impact of economic hardship across these eras, and it examined the impact of World War II, but it did not attempt to capture other contextual changes, such as the organizational properties of large organizations that emerged from the war, or the remarkable economic growth and migration after the war. We now have the data collection technology to obtain such information, such as survey instruments on organizations (Kalleberg, 1994), and geographic data on residence from satellite readings. The challenge in longitudinal studies is to assess contextual changes across the life course and their effects. People select themselves into situations which, in turn, shape their lives.

A third theme has to do with trajectories of resilience and their dependence on stable institutions and supportive relationships. Depression cohorts in the United States were often characterized as members of a "lost generation," but our studies document a life course of resilience for most of the Oakland and Berkeley cohort. Military service pulled many youth out of poverty and marriage stabilized their lives, and the booming economy of the postwar era provided an opportunity to move ahead in their lives. A great many youth from deprived families managed to rise above disadvantage B they were resilient. By contrast, there is reason to expect less evidence of resilience among the German cohorts of the 1920s. A larger percentage died in the war and Germany became a battlefield that led to the destruction of towns and the economy. We have no firm evidence, and so it only represents a hypothesis.

This comparison illustrates a key principle of life course theory, that of historical time and place: The life course of individuals is embedded in and shaped by the historical times and places they experience over their lifetime. People are born in a specific historical time, but its meaning depends on what it refers to, whether the 1930s in the United States, England, or Germany. The Depression experience varied by ecological settings within these societies. The American West did not have as prolonged a depression crisis as the eastern region of aging cities. Historical time must be coupled with a particular place, and the impact of a particular ecology depends on its historical time (see Heinz, Kelle, Witzel, and Zinn, 1998). Every project and longitudinal study are tagged with a particular historical time and place. But no matter how consequential these social facts are, studies will no doubt continue to be carried out as if they do not exist. As Schaeper, Kuhn, and Witzel (1998) assert, "Space-blindness is a traditional feature of sociological theory in general and of life-course research in particular ... and, with few exceptions, space continues to be a neglected category," though there is less reason now for this indifference. Data collection can and often does include information on spatial location and characteristics. The deficiency could be said today of the neglect of historical time and context, despite the emphasis brought to this perspective by historians and historically-oriented sociologists. Intellectual change takes time.

Historical Time and Place in Birth Cohorts

As early as the 1850s, demographers were viewing lives from the vantage point of birth cohorts (Sundt, 1980). A surge in births in the past led to corresponding increases in subsequent marriages and births. More recently Richard Easterlin (1980) has stressed the connection between "birth and fortune" or opportunity. In both cases, we are encouraged to believe that birth cohorts are homogeneous on historical and ecological experience. But this account has no connection to reality. In fact, birth cohorts may locate people in historical time but they are typically diverse on historical and geographic experience or exposure.

American "children of the Great Depression" illustrate this point very well. Some were economically deprived, while others were not. The deprived came from middle and working class families. Beyond the study itself, the deprived and more privileged children came from different parts of the country, rural and urban. Membership in a birth cohort thus represents little more than an initial step toward understanding the impact of historical and ecological circumstances in the lives and life courses of individuals. Historical time is only part of this experiential impact.

Consider for example the Cultural Revolution in the People=s Republic of China, a period that extends from 1966 to 1976. One of the earliest features of this time was Chairman Mao=s decision to send coastal urban youth from affluent homes especially to the countryside for re-education (Zhou & Hou, 1999). Millions of young people from the 1948-55 birth cohort were pulled out of schools and transported to rural villages all over China. Some youth worked on the farms while others worked in the mines. Those who went to the countryside at the beginning of the revolution spent up to ten years their, though little is known about where these youth went and for how long. Both factors would make a significant difference in their lives. No study has actually investigated the journeys taken by these young people and their influences on them.

But this change in residence most likely led to delays in marriage, losses in education, and postponements in forming careers (Gerber and Hout, 1985). In June 1966, the government suspended the admission of young people to college and graduate programs for the year. This action on graduate programs lasted throughout the Cultural Revolution, effectively denying college graduates access to post-graduate education over a 12 year period. Two studies (Deng & Treiman, 1997; Davis, 1992) found that the educational advantages of coming from a privileged family declined abruptly during the Cultural Revolution. A large percentage of the young people who were closed out of graduate education were sent to rural areas to be re-educated in the mines and farms. But the duration of this sent-down experience varied widely from a few years to over a decade. Some disruptions led to the loss of education and marital delays; but other effects may appear in worklife and health. The occurrence of these disruptions may well have something to do with the students' destinations, pathways, and unique experiences B no study has focused on these specifics.

Region of destination and pathways traveled have not become a target for systematic study as yet, and we have no satisfying record of the daily life of the sent-down youth, apart from scattered diaries. Each of these unknowns has much to contribute to knowledge about how the experience influenced the life course of this cohort. But we know from personal accounts that some of the young people were welcomed to their village while others were treated more harshly.

The life-course impact of the sent-down experience stems from the total configuration of factors.

These include their duration of rural experience and their escape route from their rural setting. Were other young people and adults part of this journey? How long did it take and did it lead to higher education in other countries, as was the case for many who settled in the western world?

In any case, the "sent-down" experience has become a well-known generational line of demarcation, just as service in World War II has been for veterans.

The "sent-down" mandate focused on a single birth cohort in the period of youth, and yet it produced widely varied experiences, as far as we know. Some were sent-down to the countryside and near-age sibs were not, and dramatically different pathways and outcomes mark the experience of this sent-down population. Two decades later the Soviet Union broke apart into its component provinces, and in doing so placed the younger cohort of this country in totally different social and political systems. Fortunately, an Estonian sociologist, Mikk Titma (with Nancy Tuma, Paths of a Generation, 1995) managed to survey this population's students as they were completing secondary school in 1983-85 across 15 regions, and then followed them up across multiple data collections up to the late 1990s. The Soviet Union collapsed after the August 1991 coup and Gorbachev was replaced by Yeltsin and the establishment of Russia as an independent state.

Yeltsin ended Communist rule and the state's central control of the economy. Drastic reform policies created serious problems and by 1996 the Russian economy was only three-fifths of its size four years earlier (Gerber & Hout, 1998). Titma and Tuma (1995) assessed the achievements, life expectations, and backgrounds of their young people before the Soviet Union dissolved, and then traced their lives into the extraordinary post-coup changes. One region retained the old command economy of the former Soviet Union (Balarus), while others adopted a market economy ( e.g., Latvia, Estonia) or returned to a more primitive rural exchange system (e.g.,Tajikistan). The socioeconomic lives of these young people closely resembled the changes of their region of destination in the old Soviet Union. The Estonian cohort is by far the most prosperous, whereas downward trajectories were common among youth from Belarus and the Ukraine.

Despite the profound regional differences in this cohort and widespread instability, Titma and Tuma found that the generation's future was written in large measure by their personal accomplishments, self-assessments, and goals when they were first contacted in high school. Transitions tend to accentuate individual differences (Caspi & Moffitt, 1993), and this study found that academic success and high aspiration were more predictive of subsequent occupational status and income in 1999 than family background. Interestingly, the young men who had become entrepreneurs with hired personnel were most visible in high school through their ambition and high self-appraisal of personal skills in the management of people.

Within this cohort, women outperformed men in education (Tuma & Titma, 1998). And the difference led back to plans before secondary school graduation, to the greater effort of girls toward entering a post-secondary school, and to the successful completion of this level of education. This difference is not surprising in a society that opened up worklife opportunities for women, and it is a difference that appears in other western societies as well. Tuma and Titma speculate that wage differentials for traditional male jobs in the skilled trades may have lured young men away from higher education. They also note that male students in secondary school receive less encouragement to achieve academically, when compared to that experienced by females.

This longitudinal study has just begun to investigate the actual life courses of its secondary school cohort of 1983-85, and the data collected to date are limited to surveys of the former students. Ethnographies and qualitative interviews are not part of the project. Historical forces placed a critical role in assigning youth to different social and political ecologies, though we know little about the overall impact of this cohort differentiation. Even so, region is much too general to capture the effects of variations in the social ecology. Rural and urban variations need to be considered, along with occupations that mark off the rural areas, such as farmers.

Germany, China and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union have provided historical experiments that have differentiated the lives of young people who were born at the same time.

They demonstrate most compellingly the importance of joining historical facts with spatial location and its potential effect on how changes are experienced.

A Concluding Perspective

When Urie Bronfenbrenner directed our attention to the historical times in which we carry out studies, his perspective was extraordinarily novel. For the most part, investigators were not studying the life course nor placing their study members in historical and geographic context. Since then we have experienced a truly remarkable growth of longitudinal studies. This development not only includes the study of young children into the adult years, but also the recognition that human aging requires this kind of design B that aging needs to be studied from the earliest moments of life across the life span. Aging cannot be understood when investigations begin at age 50 or 60.

This new "age of longitudinal studies" has played an important role in focusing attention on the life course of human development and aging, and on one of its core principles - that of historical time and place. When children are followed from early childhood into adulthood and middle age, the task raises questions about their pathways and the implications of pursuing one path and not another. How lives are lived has significant developmental and aging implications.

Variations of this kind also pose the question of how to view lives through time. The age-graded life course is one response, including a thoughtful consideration of historical and ecological influences. In my brief presentation, I view the life course from this vantage point.

I shall close by mentioning several of the numerous challenged we face in this field of study.

First, historical and geographic influences are typically present in our longitudinal studies, and yet they are often treated as a methodological problem and not as a substantive problem worthy of study. We live in a rapidly changing world. Should we not study what that means for the research in which we are engaged?

Second, historical and geographic influences are not restricted to the early years or later years. They occur across the life course. More effort to assess them is needed.

Third, the mechanisms by which these influences affect lives and human development deserve more attention than they have received. For many years we assumed that influences assessed at a point in time represent the full story of a "social effect," but influences typically cumulate over time. This life course dynamic is discussed but too rarely studied. Genetic influences are part of this story, but I shall leave this topic for another time.

We do indeed live in exciting times for studies of the life course. Not infrequently, I have felt like the early sociologists at Chicago who "ran out of students to study all the changes taking place in their city." My hope is that successive generations of social scientists will commit their energies to the impact of these changes, and to the influence of new cohorts on social institutions.

Thank you