Life course approach

The life course approach, also known as the life course perspective or life course theory, refers to an approach developed in the 1960s for analyzing people's lives within structural, social, and cultural contexts. Origins of this approach can be traced to pioneering studies as Thomas' and Znaniecki's "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America" from the 1920s or Mannheim's essay on the "Problem of generations". The life course approach examines an individual's life history and sees, for example, how early events influence future decisions and events such as marriage and divorce, engagement in crime, or disease incidence. The primary factor promoting standardization of the life course was improvement in mortality rates brought about by the management of contagious and infectious diseases such as smallpox. A life course is defined as "a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time". In particular, the approach focuses on the connection between individuals and the historical and socioeconomic context in which these individuals lived. The method encompasses observations including history, sociology, demography, developmental psychology, biology, public health and economics. So far, empirical research from a life course perspective has not resulted in the development of a formal theory.