Graphing Age Trajectories

John Mirowsky and Jinyoung Kim
Additional contact information
John Mirowsky: The University of Texas at Austin, mirowsky@prc.utexas.edu

Sociological Methods & Research, 2007, vol. 35, issue 4, 497-541

Abstract: Surveys often sample adults across a broad range of ages, measuring the same outcomes in several interviews spaced during a period of years and comparing the changes observed across segments of the adult life course. Put in sequence, those change vectors provide a composite image of the outcome's life course trajectory. To illustrate, the authors estimate depression vectors in a sample of U.S. adults ages 18 and older at baseline in 1995, with follow-up interviews in 1998 and 2001. They show the vector equations and their graphs and also their synthetic-cohort projection. The authors introduce the trend-function and virtual-cohort projection, showing how they provide tests of ``convergence'' and other hypotheses about trajectories and trends. Results show depression dropping and then rising across adulthood more steeply than suggested by cross-sectional differences among age groups. They also indicate a rise and fall in age-specific levels of depression across cohorts.

Keywords: depression; life course; latentgrowthmodels; age-period-cohort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:35:y:2007:i:4:p:497-541

DOI: 10.1177/0049124106296015

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