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Poverty transitions can be explained by two opposing theories: the traditional sociological approach that focusses on social stratification and individualisation theory, which emphasises on life course risks for all strata. Both perspectives have been investigated extensively for income poverty while neglecting other important poverty indicators, such as deprivation or the receipt of social assistance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the latter to investigate the impact of social stratification (e.g. social class), life course risks (e.g. health problems), and their interactions on the probability of social assistance entry for Germany.

The analysis utilises survey data containing a sample of first-time social assistance entrants and a sample of the residential population. Applying case-control methodology, logistic regression is conducted to model the impact of social stratification determinants, life course risks, and their interactions on the probability of social assistance entry.

Social stratification determinants, particularly social class, have a significant effect. However, their effect is weaker than the effect of life course risks. Contrary to the prediction of individualisation theory, the poverty-triggering impact of life course risks varies substantially by social stratum. The combination of both theories yields high predictive power.

This paper is the first to comprehensively test social stratification and individualisation theory with respect to social assistance receipt as a poverty indicator. It is the first paper that investigates the entire population at risk of social assistance entry in Germany.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of “risk” in relation to old age. Ideas are explored linked with what has been termed as the “risk society” and the extent to which it has become part of the organizing ground of how we define and organise the “personal” and “social spaces” in which to grow old in western modernity.

A theoretical paper in three parts, including: an introduction to the relevance and breakdown in trust relations; a mapping out of the key assumptions of risk society; and examples drawn from social welfarism to consolidate an understanding of the contructedness of old age in late modernity.

Part of this reflexive response to understanding risk and old age is the importance of recognising self‐subjective dimensions of emotions, trust, biographical knowledge and resources.

This discussion provides a critical narrative to the importance and interrelatedness of the sociology of risk to the study of old age.

This study examined changes in work precarity (i.e., job insecurity and income insecurity) and involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession in 2007 among people with and without disabilities. Using five waves of nationally representative data from the Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) panel study, the findings demonstrated that people with disabilities who had early experiences of income insecurity were more likely to experience later income insecurity than people without disabilities. Those who had a functional disability and experienced job insecurity and income insecurity at W1, in 1986, were also significantly more likely to experience involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession. These findings highlight the disproportionate impact of early work precarity for people with disabilities and are discussed as an application of the life-course concept of cumulative disadvantage.

An inquiry into the constitution of the experience of patienthood. It understands “becoming a patient” as a production of a subjectivity, in other words as a process of individuation and milieu that occurs through an ontology of production. This ontology of production can, of course, also be understood as a political ontology. Therefore, this is, first of all, an inquiry into a mode of production, and, secondly, an inquiry into its relation to the issue of social justice – because of effects of digital divisions. In these terms, it also reflects on how expert discourses, such as in medical sociology and science studies (STS), can (and do) articulate their problems.

An integrative mode of discourse analysis, strongly related to discursive institutionalism, called semantic agency theory: it considers those arrangements (institutions, informal organizations, networks, collectivities, etc.) and assemblages (intellectual equipment, vernacular epistemologies, etc.) that are constitutive of how the issue of “patient experience” can be articulated form its position within an ontology of production.

The aim not being the production of a finite result, what is needed is a shift in how “the construction of patient experience” is produced by expert discourses. While the inquiry is not primarily an empirical study and is also limited to “Western societies,” it emphasizes that there is a relation between political ontologies (including the issues of social justice) and the subjectivities that shape the experiences of people in contemporary health care systems, and, finally, that this relation is troubled by the effects of the digital divide(s).

A proposal “to interrogate and trouble” some innovative extensions and revisions – even though it will not be able to speculate about matters of degree – to contemporary theories of biomedicalization, patienthood, and managed care.

Recent intensification of the “politicisation of childhood” has been observed by analysts in numerous social science disciplines, and in a variety of public policy domains. Sociologists of childhood, for example, often attribute this greater politicisation both to shifts in the social construction of “social problems” and visions of children's agency (for example Mayall, 1994; Oakley, 1994, p. 17; Qvortrup, 1994; Livingstone, 2002, p. 13). Others observe this politicisation in changing patterns of defamilialisation and refamilialisation of social care and their implications for patterns of social solidarity (Leira & Saraceno, 2002 or Wincott, 2006, for example). Indeed, the politicisation of childhood – defined as the move from childhood being understood as primarily a family or parental responsibility to it being also a matter of public importance and concern – has emerged as a major theme in debates about “modernising” social policy paradigms (for example, Leira, 2002; Jenson, 2004; Esping-Andersen, Gallie, Hemerijck, & Myles, 2002).

Previous research has indicated that low resting heart rate (RHR), measured at age 18, predicts later psychopathy, and that high RHR acts as a protective factor in nullifying the influence of several psychosocial risk factors in predicting later antisocial and criminal outcomes. This paper aims to investigate high RHR as a protective factor against age 8–10 psychosocial risk factors in predicting psychopathy factors at age 48 (measured by the PCL:SV).

Data collected in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development are analyzed. This is a prospective longitudinal study of 411 London males from age 8 to age 61.

This paper first reports the age 8–10 psychosocial risk factors that predict the interpersonal/affective Factor 1 and the lifestyle/antisocial Factor 2. Then interaction effects with high RHR are studied. The results indicate that high RHR acts as a protective factor against a convicted father and a depressed mother in predicting both psychopathy factors. It also protected against harsh discipline, large family size, low verbal IQ, high hyperactivity, poor parental supervision and a high delinquency-rate school in predicting one of these psychopathy factors, and against a convicted mother in a sensitivity analysis.

This is the first ever longitudinal study showing that high RHR acts as a protective factor in the prediction of psychopathy. The replicated results with different antisocial outcomes show that more research is warranted on the protective effects of high RHR.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the age-friendliness of local environments and self-reported loneliness for a representative sample of community-dwelling adults aged 55+ in Ireland.

Data were from the Healthy and Positive Ageing Initiative Age friendly Cities and Counties Survey (n=10,540) (2016). Several age friendly indicators, as proposed by World Health Organisation, were included in this study: outdoor spaces and buildings; access to social services; social participation; respect and social inclusion; and transport. Loneliness was measured using five items from the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Informed by an ecological approach to ageing, multi-level negative binomial regression models were used to investigate the association between each age friendly indicator and social loneliness. Models were adjusted for known demographic, socio-economic and health correlates of loneliness.

Average loneliness scores were significantly higher for those in poorer health, who lived alone, were materially deprived and those never or formerly married. Lower ratings and poorer outcomes for several interrelated age friendly place-based factors were significantly associated with higher loneliness scores: difficulty with transport, difficulty accessing social services, barriers to community activities, lower social engagement, and experiences and perceptions of ageism in the community; however, the effect sizes were small.

This study identified several modifiable age friendly features of local environments that are associated with loneliness in this older population. The results of this study can inform coordinated local and national efforts to enhance the age-friendliness of local environments and reduce the risk and experience of loneliness among the ageing population in Ireland.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how employed single-parents differ from parents in two-parent families in their experience of work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC). Looking at job-related as well as family-related demands and resources, this research investigated to what degree these demands and resources contribute to differences in WFC and FWC, how their relevance in predicting conflicts varies between single parents and other parents and the role of compositional differences in work and family demands and resources.

Cross-sectional linear regression analyses were applied to analyze a random sample of employees in large work organizations in Germany. The sample included 3,581 parents with children up to the age of 25, of whom 346 were single parents.

The results indicated that single parents face more FWC, but not more WFC, than other parents. For all parents, job demands such as overtime, supervising responsibilities and availability expectations were associated with higher levels of WFC, whereas job resources such as job autonomy, support from supervisors and flexible working hours were associated with lower levels of WFC. In predicting FWC, family demands and resources played only a minor role. However, results provide only scant evidence of differences between single parents and other parents in terms of the effects of job and family demands and resources.

This study offers interesting insights into the diversity of WFC and FWC experiences in Germany. It provides first evidence of the impact of job and family demands and resources on both directions of work–family conflicts among employed single parents as a specific social group.

Influenced by postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, cultural studies and humanities researchers have critiqued ways that old age plays out in lived realities – including effects of ageism and power loss in both private and public spheres. Generally, older people are perceived negatively and as less powerful than younger people. Age tends to trump most other social identity dimensions in negative ways so that aging is an eventuality that many people the world over dread or fear.

In recent years, age has been treated as a social, political and economic issue that draws from anxiety and fear associated with the advancing life course. Some nations outlaw age discrimination in the workplace, but others do not. So, while improved sanitation, diet and health care means that many people live longer, they still face enduring negative stereotypes about aging processes. Chapter 8 sharpens the focus on social identity marked by age and dimensions that overlap with age – in the larger social milieu and in organizational contexts. Several theoretical ties bind this chapter’s exploration of age and aging, including critical/cultural studies, feminism, critical gerontology, and postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives. To explore research on aging and identity, this chapter is divided into subthemes: sociocultural perspectives on and theorizing about aging, age categories and birth cohorts, aging effects for organizations, aging effects for employees, and age with other social identity intersectionalities.