Family Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective

This paper investigates the role of family trajectory, i.e., the whole sequence of family events during the life course of early adults in shaping their health outcomes. Union formation and childbearing are jointly considered, since the two life domains are highly connected and their intersections may have an effect on health outcomes. Data come from wave I and wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in the United States. The paper is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on family transitions and investigates if changes in timing (when events happen), quantum (what and how many transitions), and ordering (in what order), have an effect on the health of young women. In the second part, life course trajectories are classified into six groups representing different ideal-types of family trajectories and the association of these trajectories with health outcomes is explored. Results suggest that family trajectories play an important role on different health outcomes. Controlling for selection and background characteristics, precocious and “non-normative” transitions are associated with lower self-reported health and higher propensity of smoking and drinking.