Social Participation over the Life Course: A Longitudinal Study of Work and Family Events

Abstract

Social participation is a dynamic process that changes over the life course, while people fill different social roles as they age. Previous studies on social participation have looked at differences between age groups, but the great majority is based on cross-sectional data, with the inevitable limitations that go along with that. The first objective of this study is to provide a descriptive account of the dynamic nature of both informal and formal social participation processes using longitudinal data. The second contribution is to examine the effects of different life course events on the degree and forms of social participation. We study a wide range of life course events, both in the work and the family domain. The study draws on data from the German Socio-economic Panel (GSOEP) from 1985 to 2010. The analyses will be conducted estimating growth curve models in a hierarchical modeling setting.