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Purpose: In this chapter, we develop a concept of social biographies which draws on social network and life course theories to examine how a diverse set of social relationships impacts health of sexual and gender minority (SGM) people over time.

Design/methodology/approach: We provide an overview of several decades of research on SGM people's social relationships, organizing this research within a social biographies framework.

Findings: We theorize about the importance of both the structure and content of SGM people's social networks for health, how these social relationships interact with each other, how these social biographies and their impacts shift across SGM cohorts and over the life course, and how they further are shaped by the intersection of a range of factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, social class).

Social biographies can remain constant or change over time, and relationships of all types and durations have the power to significantly improve or undermine health. This is in part because social ties both buffer and exacerbate the inimical effects of stress on health.

Originality/value: Traditional conceptualizations of relationships fail to reflect the diversity of relationships in SGM lives. Studying this diversity deepens our view of how social biographies influence health and how health inequities between SGM and cisgender and heterosexual (cishet) populations emerge. Studying social biographies of SGM people using theoretical and methodological tools from life course and social network perspectives reveals existing voids in the current literature, enabling researchers to better understand the shifting nature of social relationships in the twenty-first century.

This chapter focuses on the heterogeneous pathways (including marital and cohabiting union and parenting histories) through which people navigate their family life courses from adolescence through mid-life, and their implications for union dissolution in middle and later life. The analyses draw on data (retrospective, cross-sectional) from the 2011 and 2017 Canadian General Social Surveys. The study sample includes individuals aged 50 and over (n = 14,547) who were in a union at age 50. Sequence analyses are used to identify the most common family life course trajectories among these individuals from adolescence through midlife (ages 15–50). Logistic regression analyses then address the implications of these trajectories for union dissolution in middle and later life (ages 50+). The results reveal four main family trajectories that characterize the earlier years of the adult life course: married with children, cohabiting with children, single or cohabiting without children, and married without children. These family trajectories, together with their level of complexity, play an important role in relation to both marital and cohabiting union dissolution outcomes in later life.

Comparative studies have confirmed that the current types of cohabitation (defined as living together as a couple without being married) and the meanings attached to them differ across Europe. This variation could reflect differences in the levels of progress or the stages countries have reached in a common developmental process, as suggested by the theory of the Second Demographic Transition and Kiernan’s stage model of cohabitation. However, it may also indicate that countries are on different developmental paths, as suggested by path dependency theories. To examine whether changes in the prevalence of cohabitation follow a common script, this study analyses types of cohabitation within emerging family formation patterns over cohorts and across countries.

For this purpose, sequence methodology is applied to analyze cohort-specific family trajectories in France, western Germany, Norway, and Italy. In particular, using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS), patterns of union status and co-residence with (own) children between ages 15 and 35 among the 1935–1969 birth cohorts (for Germany, among the 1940–1974 birth cohorts) are compared.

Our findings provide some support for the claim that there were common patterns of change. However, also country-specific variations in family trajectory patterns were detected, which suggests that general processes of change were mediated through country-specific institutions (path dependencies). The empirical evidence for convergence as well as for divergence indicates that both theoretical strands add to our understanding of the spread of cohabitation in European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an understanding of choices of organic food in relation to life course by taking into account of age and two indicators of diet-related identity, vegetarianism and healthful attribute preference for agricultural produce. The stated variables tend to reveal how consumer attitudes and consumption of organic produces relate to life course factors across diet-related identities and age groups.

This study takes adult consumers of Taichung City in Central Taiwan as the target population. A survey data by personal interviews collected through systematic sampling of four supermarkets and one farmer’s market was employed to obtain a sample of 322 adult consumers in February, 2010.

This study finds that the level of individual vegetarianism is significantly correlated with organic food attitude. Individuals who live with young children and possess healthful preference for agricultural produce demonstrate more positive attitudes toward organic food. In addition, being in poor health or taking care of acutely or chronically ill family members, living with a spouse, in favor of vegetarianism, and approval of healthful attributes in choosing agricultural produce all contribute to an individual’s intake of organic food. Along with age, living with young children is found to have joint effects in influencing an individual’s choice of organic food.

Since the stages of life is interwoven with various factors such as age, marriage, child-raising and other life events and spans a long period of time, the authors suggest that a longitudinal study may be carried out in future studies to reveal more detailed and valid information. The formation of life course indicators should be more specified to include all possible stages or conditions. Mixture of qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, will be a better approach to obtain more detailed and meaningful information. Future studies should apply more complicated designs to obtain further theoretical implications.

First, taking the family rather than individuals as the marketing unit is a more effective strategy for organic food marketers, producers and policy makers. Second, more educational activities or training events in food preparation that simultaneously target both parents and children at the same time should be held. Third, extension agencies of organic agriculture and organizations affiliated with vegetarianism should seek to establish more bilateral educational or commercial cooperation in order to strengthen the development of organic agriculture.

Previous studies have rarely explored the issue of organic food choice and life course and its possible moderating effects with diet-related identity. In this survey of Taiwanese consumers, there are sufficient evidences to confirm the connection between life course factors and the consumption of organic produces, either by the figures of main effects or interaction effects.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic condition with variable physical, cognitive, and quality of life impacts. Little research has investigated how MS outcomes vary by social identity (race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, and nationality) and social location (place within systems of power and privilege). However, emerging evidence points to racial and ethnic group disparities in MS outcomes. This chapter integrates core concepts from the life course perspective and an intersectional feminist disability framework to interrogate the role of diagnosis pathways in determining differential MS outcomes. MS diagnosis pathways (the time from symptom onset to the point of diagnosis) are a logical place to begin this work given the varying nature of symptom onset and the importance of a quick diagnosis for optimal MS outcomes. Whereas the life course perspective provides a framework for understanding disability transitions and pathways across the life span, an intersectional feminist disability framework centers disability within an axis of overlapping social identities and locations. The combination of both frameworks provides an approach capable of examining how MS disparities and inequities emerge in different contexts over time. The chapter begins with an overview of MS and current knowledge on disparities (mainly racial) in MS prevalence, diagnosis, and outcomes. The chapter proceeds to describe the utility of key concepts of both the life course perspective and intersectional frameworks when researching health disparities. Finally, the chapter ends with a theoretical application of an intersectional feminist disability life course perspective to investigate disparities in MS diagnosis pathways.

Housing consumption has been rising throughout the post-war era in Norway. However, at the end of the 1990s there was a decline in consumption among young age groups. This tendency is confirmed by newer data: consumption among younger households has stabilised at a lower level than used to be the case. Less of these households are owner-occupiers and they live in smaller dwellings compared to fifteen years ago.

In this paper the life course paradigm is used to explain these consumption changes. We find no signs of altering housing preferences among today's youth. The reduced housing consumption among this group can instead be seen in relation to new ways of organising the life course. Postponement of important life events such as completing one's education, entering the labour market, and starting a family of one's own will also postpone the point at which one becomes a homeowner for the first time. The observed decline in housing consumption among young household can, in other words, be understood as a delay in consumption. New life courses among today's youth entail new ways of adapting to the housing market.

About 80 per cent of consumers in the world reside in emerging consumer markets (ECM). Thus, consumer behaviour theories and models should be tested for validation in ECM such as South Africa (socio-economically and culturally diverse). The purpose of this paper is to test three (human capital, stress and socialization) life-course theoretical perspectives on materialism among South African young adults. Employing the three life-course theoretical perspectives, it was posited that disruptive family events experienced during adolescence will affect materialism at young adulthood directly and indirectly through family resources received, perceived stress from family disruptions and peer communication about consumption.

In total, 300 South African young adults were surveyed. Structural equation modelling was used to test eight hypotheses developed from the three life-course theoretical perspectives on materialism. Independent-samples t-test was first conducted to assess whether the respondents were materialistic.

The South African young adults were found to be materialistic and this was explained by peer communication about consumption during adolescence (socialization life-course theoretical perspective). Disruptive family events experienced during adolescence significantly affected family resources negatively, and perceived stress positively, but these outcomes had no impact on materialism at young adulthood as the human capital and stress life-course theoretical perspectives suggest.

The results reinforce the need to test the validity of western theories in an African context. The test can improve theories and can help advance knowledge about consumer diversity across cultures.

This research seeks to provide a historical review of the life cycle concept in marketing. The paper aims to show the development of traditional life cycle models and links to the life course perspective.

The authors relate to life events and transitions in consumers' life trajectories, life status, role transitions, and role identities as determinants of consumer behavior. The paper reveals future research potential in the field. Essentially, the authors demonstrate the need for life cycle models grounded on empirical data and discuss related methodological issues.

This paper provides a temporal systematization of theoretical and empirical life cycle research. The major outcome is an outline of conceptual and methodological research directions that enable researchers to follow the life course perspective and to derive empirically grounded life cycle models.

Providing chronological literature compilations and an evolutionary review of life cycle research, the authors identify future research directions. To encourage empirical development of the concept, the article also refers to the related methodological literature.

Both marketing thought and practitioners benefit from the insights presented. Marketing managers may better address consumers' changing needs over their lifetime, strengthen customer loyalty and reduce brand switching, thereby enhancing customer lifetime value.

This paper adds to the study of the consumer life cycle by providing a comprehensive anthology of life cycle research from 1910 to 2010. It shows major research streams and reveals future research potential in marketing.

This chapter focuses on military couples and factors that affect their experiences of work, stress, and health using a life course perspective. An introduction to the definition of military couples is provided followed by a brief review of previous research on marital quality and divorce among military couples. The core of the chapter describes the advantages of using a life course perspective to examine the military life course for couples, and two critical transitions of military life are more fully examined. Specifically, periodic relocation and deployment and their impacts on military couples are reviewed in detail. Future directions for research on military couples are provided, and the use of the Convoy Model of Social Relations as an integrative approach to examine military personnel and family members’ stress and health across the military life course is introduced.

This article aims to explore the dominant normative patterns that establish the timing and order of life events, determining the desirable life strategies for working-class youth in modern Russia.

Exploring the interrelationship between new working-class studies and life-course studies, this research combines the consideration of life course as a structurally organised integrity with a phenomenological perspective on the study of life strategies. The empirical basis of research consists of a survey of 1532 young working-class representatives living in the Ural Federal District of Russia and biographical in-depth interviews with 31 of them.

The study resulted in persisting significance and values of traditional life-course structures while showing that the current social conditions do not allow for this life strategy to be fulfilled. Young workers choose adaptation and survival life strategies that restrict the realisation of their professional and cultural potential. The obtained data have confirmed the presence of some worldwide tendencies, such as the dispersion of events during transition to adulthood, a combination of schooling and full-time work and an earlier career start of working-class representatives.

The sequencing and timing of life-course events of Russian working-class youth is an original research topic. The present study proposes and substantiates the notion of the new working class and criteria for its definition.