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.

Included are 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 thesedisciplines.

The Life Course Perspective.- The Emergence and Development of Life Course Theory.- Historical and Cross-National Variability in the Life Course.- Generations, Cohorts, and Social Change.- Stratified Incentives and Life Course Behaviors.- Normative Structuring of the Life Course.- Age Structuring and the Rhythm of the Life Course.- Movement Through the Life Course.- Parental Identification, Couple Commitment, and Problem Solving among Newlyweds.- Family Context and Individual Weil-Being.- Intergenerational Relations in Changing Times.- Educational Transitions, Trajectories, and Pathways.- From Work Trajectories to Negotiated Careers.- Government and the Life Course.- The First-Grade Transition in Life Course Perspective.- From Student to Worker.- Midcourse.- Desistance from Crime over the Life Course.- Desistance from Crime and Deviance as a Turning Point in the Life Course.- Migration, Human Development, and the Life Course.- Life Course Construction.- Self-Agency and the Life Course.- Connections between Childhood and Adulthood.- How and Why the Understanding of Developmental Continuity and Discontinuity is Important.- Adolescent Work and the Early Socioeconomic Career.- Methods and Interdisciplinary Approaches.- Distinguishing Age, Period, and Cohort Effects.- Event History Models for Life Course Analysis.- Panel Models for the Analysis of Change and Growth in Life Course Studies.- Characterizing the Life Course as Role Configurations and Pathways.- Linking Life Course and Life Story.- Personality Trait Development in Adulthood.- Biological Models of Behavior and the Life Course.- Socioeconomic Status and Health over the Life Course.- The Future of the Life Course.- Toward a Global Geography of the Life Course.- Reflections on the Future of the Life Course.- Life Course Research.- Success and Challenge in Demographic Studies of the Life Course.- The Future of the Life Course.- Future of the Life Course.