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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.

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.

How can a qualitative life course approach inform the analysis of the impact of disability policy on individual lives? This contribution puts forward the concept of policy reception in an effort to apply the key principles of a life course perspective to the study of policy impact, a perspective which is of particular relevance in the case of disability policy. Drawing on a broader qualitative study of the reception of disability policy in France, the paper, focusing on the in-depth analysis of two life stories, makes two main contributions. The first is theoretical, putting forward the concept of policy reception to address the missing link between “the state and the life course,” as pointed out by Mayer and Schoepflin (1989). The second is methodological, detailing how biographical interviews, following this life course approach, can be used to operationalize this concept of policy reception. These contributions are illustrated by study results focusing on the reception of disability-related educational policies.

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.

Using a life course perspective, we develop a theoretical model of how parents can influence their children's propensity to enter self-employment. We draw on the sociological, economic, psychological, and behavioral genetics literatures to develop a model in which parental influence occurs in different ways, depending on someone's stage in their life course. We review and summarize existing findings for parental influences on entrepreneurial entry using a three-part life course framework: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We also analyze new data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics on the extent to which children were involved in their parents’ businesses. From our review, we propose strong effects from genetic inheritances and parenting practice (during childhood); moderate effects from reinforcement of work values and vocational interests (during adolescence); and little influence from financial support but stronger effects from other tangible means of support (during adulthood).

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.

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.

Institutional structures of professional career paths often support breadwinner–homemaker families, with a stay at home wife available full time to support the professional (and children), so the professional can devote complete energy and time to developing a career. This research examines how two partners in the same narrowly structured, fast track occupational culture such as those occurring for dual military officer couples shape how women and men negotiate decision making and life events. Data from interviews with 23 dual U.S. Navy officer couples build upon Becker and Moen’s (1999) scaling back notions. With both spouses in these careers, placing limits on work is extremely difficult due to fast track cultures that demand higher status choices and structures that formally do not reliably consider collocations. Trading off occurs, but with distress due to the unique demands on two partners in the fast track culture, which means career death for some. Two partners in fast track careers may not yet have given up on two careers as many peers may have, but they lose a great deal, including time together and their desired number of children. But they ultimately posit individual choice rather than focusing on structural change. The pressured family life resulting is likely similar to that for partners in other narrowly structured, fast track cultures such as in law firms and academia.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe and evaluate the life grid as a methodology for historical research; and to provide an example application investigating the dynamics of family meals over a lifetime by pairing life course theory with the life grid method of obtaining oral histories.

To explore how the meanings and processes of meals change, the authors conducted interviews with 15 respondents aged 80 years old and over, on the topic of family meals.

The paper discusses the merits of using the life grid method to analyze lifetime family consumption behavior. The findings of this example study provide insight as to how the roles, responsibilities, and loyalties of our participants had changed through births, deaths, marriages, wars, economic periods, illnesses, and the process of aging, leading to changes in dining.

The benefit of the life grid method described in this paper is its ability to minimize recall bias. In addition, the overt process of cross‐referencing events throughout the course of the interviews via the life grid method proved to be a helpful aid in identifying patterns and symmetries during the interpretation stage.