Exploring Life-Course Trajectories in Local Spatial Contexts Across Sweden

Bo Malmberg and Eva K. Andersson

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023, vol. 113, issue 2, 448-468

Abstract: This article explores typical life-course trajectories based on annual observations of educational participation, employment, and establishing a family from age sixteen to age thirty. Using latent class analysis, we identify seven different trajectory classes that capture the different life courses experienced by individuals born in 1986. Examples of trajectory classes are (1) an early partner and childbearing trajectory; (2) a trajectory that mixes employment and a long postsecondary education into the later twenties; and (3) a trajectory involving low activity, very little employment, very little postsecondary education, and not starting a family. The classes identified correspond closely to trajectories found in earlier qualitative studies using life-history interviews, but in contrast to these studies that each encompass a few dozen individuals or less, our approach identifies trajectories for the individuals of an entire birth cohort. This allows for analysis of the geographical distribution of trajectories across regions, municipality types, and neighborhoods. Individuals following long postsecondary education trajectories were heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas and university towns. At the same age, individuals following early childbearing trajectories were concentrated instead in peripheral, rural areas. Individuals from nonmetropolitan areas also tend to follow more gender-polarized trajectories. Moreover, we find that there is more trajectory-based segregation at age thirty than at age fifteen. Theoretically, our study gives support to the idea that places are structured on the basis of life-course trajectories. Local context influences how individuals are linked into different trajectories and, at the same time, the spatial sorting of trajectories will shape local contexts.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2022.2105684 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:113:y:2023:i:2:p:448-468

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raag21

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2022.2105684

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the American Association of Geographers is currently edited by Jennifer Cassidento

More articles in Annals of the American Association of Geographers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().