This comprehensive handbook provides an overview of key theoretical
perspectives, concepts, and methodological approaches that, while
applied to diverse phenomena, are united in their general approach to
the study of lives across age phases. In surveying the wide terrain of
life course studies with dual emphases on theory and empirical research,
this important reference work presents probative concepts and methods
and identifies promising avenues for future research.
The book includes sections on history and cross-national variability,
normative structuring, movement through the life course, transitions in
the life course, turning points, connections between life phases,
methodology, and the future of the life course. A major reference work
and a seminal text, it is essential reading for social scientists
studying phases within the life course, social psychologists in
sociology and psychology, demographers and academics in the field of the
life course as well as students in these disciplines.