Ebook The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Inequalities and The Life Course 1St Edition Magda Nico Gary Pollock Eds Online PDF All Chapter

The Routledge Handbook of
Contemporary Inequalities and the Life

Course 1st Edition Magda Nico Gary
Pollock Eds
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-contemporary-inequalities-
and-the-life-course-1st-edition-magda-nico-gary-pollock-eds/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Structure and Agency in Young People s Lives Theory

Methods and Agendas 1st Edition Magda Nico (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/structure-and-agency-in-young-
people-s-lives-theory-methods-and-agendas-1st-edition-magda-nico-
editor/
The Routledge Handbook of the State in Premodern India

1st Edition Hermann Kulke Bhairabi Prasad Sahu Eds
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-the-
state-in-premodern-india-1st-edition-hermann-kulke-bhairabi-
prasad-sahu-eds/
The Routledge Handbook of State Owned Enterprises 1st

Edition Luc Bernier Massimo Florio Philippe Bance Eds
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-state-
owned-enterprises-1st-edition-luc-bernier-massimo-florio-
philippe-bance-eds/
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary African Migration

1st Edition Daniel Makina (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/routledge-handbook-of-contemporary-
african-migration-1st-edition-daniel-makina-editor/
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, 2nd Edition
Knut A. Jacobsen
https://ebookmeta.com/product/routledge-handbook-of-contemporary-
india-2nd-edition-knut-a-jacobsen/
Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social

and Political Theory Routledge International Handbooks
2nd Edition Gerard Delanty (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/routledge-international-handbook-
of-contemporary-social-and-political-theory-routledge-
international-handbooks-2nd-edition-gerard-delanty-editor/
Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary

Persian Literature 1 Edition Kamran Talattof
https://ebookmeta.com/product/routledge-handbook-of-post-
classical-and-contemporary-persian-literature-1-edition-kamran-
talattof/
The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene 1st

Edition Burdon
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-law-and-
the-anthropocene-1st-edition-burdon/
Existentialism and Excess The Life and Times of Jean

Paul Sartre 1st Edition Gary Cox
https://ebookmeta.com/product/existentialism-and-excess-the-life-
and-times-of-jean-paul-sartre-1st-edition-gary-cox/
The Routledge Handbook of
Contemporary Inequalities
and the Life Course
Drawing upon perspectives from across the globe and employing an interdisciplinary life
course approach, this handbook explores the production and reproduction of different types
of inequality across a variety of social contexts.
Inequalities are not static, easily measurable, and essentially quantifiable circumstances of
life. They are processes which impact on individuals throughout the life course, interacting
with each other, accumulating, attenuating, reproducing, or distorting themselves along the
way. The chapters in this handbook examine various types of inequality, such as economic,
gender, racial, and ethnic inequalities, and analyse how these inequalities manifest them-
selves within different aspects of society, including health, education, and the family, at mul-
tiple levels and dimensions. The handbook also tackles the global COVID-19 pandemic and
its striking impact on the production and intensification of inequalities.
The interdisciplinary life course approach utilised in this handbook combines quantitative
and qualitative methods to bridge the gap between theory and practice and offer strategies and
principles for identifying and tackling issues of inequality. This book will be indispensable
for students and researchers as well as activists and policy makers interested in understanding
and eradicating the processes of production, reproduction, and perpetuation of inequalities.
Magda Nico is a Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-
ISCTE) and Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Research Methods in ISCTE-
University Institute of Lisbon. She is currently coordinating a project on the importance and
dynamics of “linked lives” within families. Her research interests include life course theory
and methods, family histories, social mobility, and the processes of inequalities.
Gary Pollock is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He cur-

rently coordinates the European Research Council-funded Cohort Community Research
and Development Infrastructure Network for Access Throughout Europe (COORDINATE)
project and has previously led the European Cohort Development (EDCP) and Measuring
Youth Well-Being (MYWEB) projects. His research interests include the design and analysis
of survey data on children and young people and their life trajectories, particularly using
longitudinal techniques.
The Routledge Handbook
of Contemporary
Inequalities and
the Life Course
Edited by Magda Nico and Gary Pollock

Cover image: © Unsplash
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Magda Nico and Gary Pollock;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Magda Nico and Gary Pollock to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nico, Magda, editor. | Pollock, Gary, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of contemporary inequalities and the life
course / edited by Magda Nico and Gary Pollock.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Routledge international handbooks | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021032262 | ISBN 9781138601505 (hbk) |
ISBN 9780429470059 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Equality—United States. | Income distribution—
United States.
Classification: LCC HM821 .R683 2022 | DDC 305.0973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032262
ISBN: 978-1-138-60150-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-16351-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-47005-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429470059
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
To each of our families for supporting us throughout.
Contents
List of figures xii

List of tables xv
List of contributors xvi
Acknowledgements xxv
SECTION 1
Inequalities as process: doing inequalities over the life course 1
Magda Nico and Gary Pollock
1 Inequality across time: social change, biography, and the life course 4
Dale Dannefer, Chengming Han, and Jiao Yu
2 Poverty and economic insecurity in the life course 15

Leen Vandecasteele, Dario Spini, Nicolas Sommet, and Felix Bühlmann
3 Inequality as process 27
Elisabetta Ruspini
4 Life course inequality and p olicy: a focus on child well-being 39

Gary Pollock, Jessica Ozan, and Haridhan Goswami
SECTION 2
Assessing inequalities: complementary methods:
imagining the understanding of inequalities 51
5 Studying social inequality over the life course in modern

societies: the methodological importance of life course studies 54
Gwendolin J. Blossfeld and Hans-Peter Blossfeld
vii
Contents
6 The analysis of inequality in life trajectories: an integration

of two approaches 63
Danilo Bolano and André Berchtold
7 Evolution of COVID-19 lethality and geographically contrasting

socio-economic factors in Brazil: a multilevel perspective 81
Joseph F. Hair, Jr., Luiz Paulo Fávero, and Rafael De Freitas Souza
8 Health inequalities across the life course: theories, statistical pitfalls,

and the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic 97
Fabian Kratz
SECTION 3
The social stratification of health: the inherent longitudinality
of health inequalities 111
9 Mental health inequalities 113

Jane D. McLeod and Max E. Coleman
10 How an analysis of lifespan inequality can contribute to our

understanding of life course inequalities 124
Alyson van Raalte
11 Two centuries of inequalities: disability and partnership in Sweden 136

Lotta Vikström, Kateryna Karhina, and Johan Junkka
12 The Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and the life course 152

Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Laura Bernardi, Juho Härkönen,
Toni C. Antonucci, Pearl A. Dykstra, Jutta Heckhausen,
Diana Kuh, Karl Ulrich Mayer, Phyllis Moen, Jeylan T. Mortimer,
Clara H. Mulder, Timothy M. Smeeding, Tanja Van Der Lippe,
Gunhild O. Hagestad, Martin Kohli, René Levy,
Ingrid Schoon, and Elizabeth Thomson
SECTION 4
Economic and wealth inequalities: the challenge of
complexity in the analysis of economic inequalities 173
13 Concepts of social stratification—static and dynamic perspectives 175

Steffen Hillmert
viii
Contents
14 Optimising the use of m easures of social stratification in r esearch

with intersectional and longitudinal analytical priorities 188
Paul Lambert and Camilla Barnett
15 Stagnation and inequality in a historical view: a comment on

Piketty’s analysis of capitalism and the Portuguese case 199
Francisco Louçã
16 Things can’t only get better: inequality and democracy

over a life-span 208
Kevin Albertson and Richard Whittle
SECTION 5
Youth, education and t ransition to adulthood:
half way down the stairs – somewhere else instead 223
17 Expansion and improved p ermeability of post-secondary

education in Germany: consequences for social inequalities
in educational attainment 226
Nicole Tieben and Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt
18 Educational expansion across c ohorts and over the life

course: an international comparison of (rapid) educational
expansion and the consequences of the differentiation of tertiary
education 240
Pia N. Blossfeld, Gwendolin J. Blossfeld, and Hans-Peter Blossfeld
19 Class in successive life courses in Britain since 1945 252

Ken Roberts
20 Mapping young Norwegians’ self-projects and future orientations 261

Ingunn Marie Eriksen and Kari Stefansen
SECTION 6
Family and linked lives: families at the heart of linked
(lives and) inequalities 271
21 Care inequality in later life in ageing societies: the unequal

distribution of the intensity of informal support in Europe 274
Marco Albertini and Riccardo Prandini
ix
Contents
22 The apple, the tree and the forest: family histories as radars of social
mobility and inequalities 285
Magda Nico and Maria Gilvania Valdivino Silva
23 Family formation and s ocial inequalities: a life course perspective 300

Stefano Cantalini
24 Farewell’s children: using the life course perspective to understand

female late fertility 312
Rosalina Pisco Costa
SECTION 7
Gender inequalities: time varying and trajectories 323
25 The mutual constitution of gendered and sexualised inequalities

in life courses 325
José Fernando Serrano-Amaya
26 Gender trajectories and the p roduction of inequalities from a life

course perspective 338
Sofia Aboim and Pedro Vasconcelos
27 Inequalities in work and the intersectional life course 349

Phyllis Moen and Mahala Miller
28 LGBTIQ+ life course inequalities and queer temporalities 362

María do Mar Castro Varela and Yener Bayramoğlu
SECTION 8
Racial and ethnic inequalities: the weight
of structure on the skin 371
29 The centrality of race to inequality across the world-system 373

Manuela Boatcă
30 A life course approach to u nderstanding ethnic health inequalities in

later life: an example using the United Kingdom as national context 383
Sarah Stopforth, Laia Bécares, James Nazroo, and Dharmi Kapadia
x
Contents
31 The inequalities of empire: comparative perspectives 394

Cátia Antunes and Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo
32 How the COVID-19 pandemic is shifting the migrant-inequality

narrative 410
Ferdinand C. Mukumbang
Index 423
xi
Figures
1.1 Theil’s measure of inequality for family income by age of head in seven
birth cohorts (observation periods 1947, 1957, 1967, 1977) 6
6.1 Graphical representation of the yearly state distribution of family trajectories
by age, females on the left panel and males on the right one 65
6.2 Graphical representation of the yearly state distribution of working
trajectories by age, females on the left panel and males on the right one 66
6.3 Graphical representation of the yearly state distribution of health trajectories
by age, females on the left panel and males on the right one 66
6.4 Clusters of family situation, working life, and health status by age – women 76
6.5 Clusters of family situation, working life, and health status by age – men 78
7.1 Proportion of people who have supplementary health services per region in Brazil 85
7.2 Gini indexes per state and region in Brazil 86
7.3 Temporal evolution of the accumulated COVID-19 confrmed cases and
lethality in Brazil 87
7.4 Temporal evolution of the accumulated COVID-19 lethality by Brazilian state 88
7.5 Histogram of the dependent variable (last available deaths) before and after
the Box-Cox transformation 90
7.6 Random intercepts and slopes by state 92
7.7 Values predicted through OLS and through multilevel modeling × observed
COVID-19 lethality 93
8.1 Qualitative assumptions about links between diferent dimensions of social
inequality and health 97
8.2 Selective mortality and health trajectories by estimation strategy 103
8.3 Conditional profle plots (left) and conditional efect plots (right) of the fnal
educational level on self-rated health 104
8.4 Conditional profle plots of the fnal educational level on self-rated health
by estimation model and level of education 106
10.1 French male ages at death from the 2016 period life table 125
11.1 Marital rates (per 1,000) and population development in Sweden
by sex 1800–2015 139
11.2 Regression results of how disability afects the chance/risk to experience
partnership, or singlehood from the 1800s until the 2010s 144
11.3 Marital chances (HR) by type of disability and gender in Sweden
1900–1960 (the Västerbotten region, POPLINK dataset) 145
11.4 Marital chances (1800s), plotted hazard ratios (HR) from Cox proportional
regression model, by type of disability and gender 145
xii
Figures
13.1 Basic model of status attainment 178

13.2 Age, period and cohort as time dimensions of stratifcation analyses 179
13.3 Developments of increasing inequality (stylised distributions of cases along a
vertical dimension of stratifcation) 180
15.1 Proft rate in production (Shaikh) in the two subperiods (Phase A, 1955–1974,
and Phase B, 1975–2012), for the USA, total and net of corporate taxes 202
15.2 Proft of the enterprise: proft rate for all the corporate sector, including
fnancial and non-fnancial sectors (US, 1966–2012) 203
15.3 US fnancial profts as percentage of corporate profts of domestic industries,
1955–2016 204
15.4 The evolution of the real average wage in Portugal under the euro (2000–2019) 206
16.1 Share of top 1% (individuals/tax units) in gross national income excluding
capital gains 212
16.2 Household and public sector debt (% of GDP) 217
16.3 UK real GDP, real house price and real share price indices (1980=100) 217
17.1 General and background-specifc increase in direct higher education degree
attainment across school leaver cohorts (%) 232
17.2 Absolute and relative changes in direct and indirect higher education degree
attainment across cohorts (%) 233
17.3 Higher education attainment gap – expressed as percentage-point diference
between students from middle and low socio-economic backgrounds versus
high background 234
17.4 Marginal efects plot of contrasts of social background across cohorts
(reference cohort: 1960–1969) 235
18.1 Model of the two educational transitions for each birth cohort 243
18.2 Change in the transition probabilities by country (cohorts 1947–52
and 1978–82) 244
18.3 Changes in the (conditional) transition probabilities in dependence of the
starting probabilities of the oldest cohort in the 22 OECD countries 246
18.4 Predicted (conditional) transition probabilities for successive cohorts of men
and women (with 95% confdence intervals) to upper secondary and tertiary
education in the Republic of South Korea (KR) 247
18.5 Changes in transition probabilities to the university of applied sciences and
the traditional university for the six social origin groups in West Germany 248
20.1 Typology: possible projects of the self 262
21.1 Inequality in the distribution of social support provided or received, Gini index 277
21.2 Percentage of respondents who report no exchange of social support 278
22.1 Exemplifcation of diferent sets of “time” comparability in family histories 288
22.2 Exemplifcation of the multiplicity of trajectories told and potentially
incorporated by an individual 291
23.1 The analytical scheme to study the intertwinement of family formation and
social inequalities 302
23.2 Average parenthood efect on occupational prestige, by gender and social
class of origin. FE models. Beta coefcients and 95% confdence intervals 304
23.3 First birth and predicted SIOPS trajectories over the frst 25 years since
labour market entry, by gender and social class of origin. FE models 306
23.4 First birth and predicted SIOPS trajectories over the frst 25 years since labour
market entry, by social class of origin and number of children: men. FE models 307
xiii
Figures
23.5 First birth and predicted SIOPS trajectories over the frst 25 years since
labour market entry, by social class of origin and number of children:
women. FE models 308
27.1 An intersectional life course model of contexts and processes fostering inequality 351
30.1 Age-standardised ratios of poor self-rated health for men and women
relative to the White British rate 387
30.2 Age-specifc rates of poor self-rated health for men and women by ethnic group 389
30.3 Relative risks of poor health for ethnic minority women compared with
White British women by age and period 390
30.4 Relative risks of poor health for ethnic minority men compared with White
British men by age and period 391
xiv
Tables
6.1 Main specificities of the clusters identified through the multichannel SA

performed separately for women and men 69
6.2 Transition matrix of health status. An example of first-order Markov chain 69
6.3 Relative importance of the different explanatory variables in the MTD
model of each cluster and each channel 71
6.4 Transition matrix of employment status. MTD model. Results for Cluster 1
among women 73
6.5 Transition matrix of health status. MTD model. Results for Cluster 1
among women 73
6.6 Relationship between the employment condition as covariate at time t–1
and health status at time t. MTD model. Results for Cluster 1 among women 73
6.7 Transition matrix of leaving arrangements. MTD model. Results for Cluster
1 among women 74
7.1 Descriptive statistics of the variables considered in the analysis 89
7.2 Estimations of the proposed multilevel model, and the OLS estimation 91
11.1 The databases on Swedish populations included in this study 142
13.1 EGP social class categories 177
13.2 Simple m obility table (with directions of mobility) 182
14.1 Selected features of six popular measures of social stratification position 190
14.2 Variations in the empirical performance of stratification measures in
predicting health, with different adaptations to longitudinal context 193
14.3 Adapting stratification measures to account for intersectional social
inequalities and for a longitudinal context 195
17.1 Sample distributions 231
17.2 Background-specific direct and indirect higher education degree attainment
and relative indirect higher education degree attainment across cohorts (%) 235
17.3 Differences in predicted probabilities of attaining a higher education degree
in first and highest education. Contrasts of cohorts and social background 235
21.1 Relation between individual’s position in the distribution of support
balance and life satisfaction, linear regression model. Overall sample and
selected countries 279
21.2 Linear probability model on the likelihood of being located at the bottom
quintile of care balance 281
xv
Contributors
Sofia Aboim is a tenured research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University
of Lisbon. She has recently coordinated the European Research Council-funded project
TRANSRIGHTS: Gender Citizenship and Sexual Rights in Europe.
Marco Albertini is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bologna. His research interests
focus on intergenerational relations; the comparative study of inequality and social stratifica-
tion; the consequences of childlessness; long-term care policies and ageing. He is one of the
founding members of the Computational Social Science Center of the University of Bologna.
Kevin Albertson is Professor of Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University with

a background in statistics and political economics. His recent work considers the impact of
globalised liberal markets on the UK, privatisation and marketisation in the public sector,
and the development of responsible innovation.
José Fernando Serrano-Amaya is Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages

and Culture of Universidad de los Andes. His research interests include gender and sexual
violence, LGBT politics, peace building youth studies and social policies. He is currently
researching the pedagogies and politics of reconciliation in Australia, Colombia and South
Africa. His most recent book is Homophobic Violence in Armed Conflict and Political Transition
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Toni C. Antonucci is the Elizabeth M. Douvan Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the

University of Michigan, where she also works as Program Director and Research Professor
in the Life Course Development Program at the Institute for Social Research. Her research
focuses on social relations and health across the life span with a special interest in cultural,
racial and ethnic similarities and differences.
Cátia Antunes is Professor of Global Economic Networks at the Institute for History,
Leiden University. Her work contemplates the comparative economic and social history of
early modern empires between 1400 and 1800.
Camilla Barnett is a Research Fellow at the University of Stirling. She has recently com-
pleted a PhD on recognising intersectionality in women’s social stratification positions.
Yener Bayramoğlu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Alice Salomon University of Berlin.

He is currently working on a NORFACE-funded research project on intersectional
xvi
Contributors
inequalities in the LGBTIQ+ life course. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Freie
Universität Berlin, where his work explored the role of digital technologies for queer refugees.
Laia Bécares is Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Science and co-Director of the Centre
for Research and Innovation in Wellbeing at the University of Sussex. Her research considers
the ways in which oppression and marginalisation lead to social and health inequalities across
the life course.
André Berchtold is Associate Professor in Statistics at the University of Lausanne. He spe-

cialises in longitudinal data collection and data analysis and the use of Markovian models as
well as health data analysis, particularly among vulnerable populations. Most of his recent
works is related to the treatment of missing data through imputation, and to the implication
of such data for causal relationships.
Laura Bernardi is Professor of Life Course Sociology and Demography at the University of
Lausanne. Her research explores fertility and family dynamics, life course and social inequal-
ities areas. She is currently coordinating a project on well-being in relation to joint family
and work dynamics and another on lone parenthood. She is Associate Editor of Advances in
Life Course Research and is currently a member of the Presiding Board of the Swiss National
Research Foundation.
Gwendolin J. Blossfeld is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bamberg. Her

research focuses on life course research, educational and social inequalities, demography and
longitudinal research methods.
Hans-Peter Blossfeld is Emeritus of Excellence at the University of Bamberg. He previ-

ously held the Chairs of Sociology at the University of Bamberg and the European Univer-
sity Institute in Florence. He has published widely on life course research, social inequality,
youth, family, educational sociology, labour market research, demography, social stratifica-
tion and mobility, quantitative social research methods and statistical methods for longitudi-
nal data analysis.
Pia N. Blossfeld is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University. Her research

focuses on life course research, educational and social inequalities, labour market sociology,
welfare state comparisons and longitudinal research methods.
Manuela Boatcă is Professor of Sociology and Head of School of the Global Studies Pro-
gramme at the University of Freiburg. She has published widely on world-systems analysis,
decolonial perspectives on global inequalities, gender and citizenship in modernity and colo-
niality, and the geopolitics of knowledge in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Danilo Bolano is Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne. He is a social demographer

and statistician. His research interests are in life course research and in applying and developing
advanced statistical tools to improve understanding of individual behaviours and attitudes.
Felix Bühlmann is Associate Professor at the Life Course and Inequality Centre of the
University of Lausanne. His research explores the life course, elites and finance. He is also a
member of the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (Centre LIVES).
xvii
Contributors
Stefano Cantalini is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social and Political

Sciences of the University of Milan. His research interests include fertility and transition
to adulthood, family sociology, social stratification and mobility, migrations, educational
returns and gender differences.
Max E. Coleman is a PhD student in Sociology at Indiana University. His research focuses
on the psychological consequences of inequality, particularly common mental health issues
such as anxiety and depression.
Rosalina Pisco Costa is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and affiliated
researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center of Social Sciences of the University of Évora. Her
research covers a broad range of issues regarding families, gender and personal life, particu-
larly family rituals in contemporary societies.
Dale Dannefer is Selah Chamberlain Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department
of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. His research is concerned with the links
between social dynamics and life course processes and currently focuses on the effects of
globalisation on life course patterns and the impacts of precarity and racism on processes of
cumulative dis/advantage. He has pioneered the use of cumulative advantage theory as an
explanatory life course framework and has published widely in sociology, psychology, human
development, education and gerontology.
Pearl A. Dykstra is Professor of Empirical Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

She is the Scientific Director of ODISSEI, the Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science
and Economic Innovations in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on intergenerational
solidarity, family change, ageing and the life course, comparative social and family policy,
and late-life well-being.
Ingunn Marie Eriksen is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Social Research institute
(NOVA) of Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research interests include the school environ-
ment, bullying, mental health and well-being in youth and surrounding issues, such as local
communities and leisure activities, through dimensions such as gender, social class, geogra-
phy and ethnicity. She has worked on a number of projects involving youth culture, peer
relations and identities and is currently the principal investigator on Inequality in Youth, a
qualitative longitudinal research project.
Luiz Paulo Fávero is Professor at the Economics, Business Administration and Accounting
College of the University of São Paulo. His research focuses on administration and financial
markets with emphasis on quantitative methods, applied multivariate models and economet-
ric analysis.
Haridhan Goswami is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan Univer-

sity. His research focuses on measuring children’s and young people’s well-being and using
quantitative evidence to make a positive impact on the lives of marginalised people. He
currently coordinates the South Asian Research Network for Childhood and Youth Studies
(SARNCYS) project. He has previously worked on European Research Council-funded
projects, including the European Cohort Development (EDCP) and Measuring Youth
Well-Being (MYWEB) projects.
xviii
Contributors
Gunhild O. Hagestad is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Agder. She has
previously held various academic positions in the USA, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands
and Germany. Her research focuses on the life course, intergenerational relations, families,
ageing and childhood.
Joseph F. Hair, Jr, is a Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of South

Alabama, where he also holds the Cleverdon Chair of Business at the Mitchell College of
Business. His research interests include multivariate data analysis, sales and sales manage-
ment, and marketing research.
Chengming Han is a PhD student in Sociology at Case Western Reserve University, where
her work focuses on cohort effects of social changes in China since 1949 and the life course
health. Her research interests include social changes and urban-rural inequalities in China,
health disparities among minorities and immigrants in the USA, ageing and the effects of
social changes and policies on the life course outcomes.
Juho Härkönen is Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute and Stock-
holm University. His research interests cover life course research, social stratification, family
demography and health. He is currently editor-in-chief of Advances in Life Course Research.
Jutta Heckhausen is a Professor at the Department of Psychological Science in the Univer-

sity of California Irvine. Her research addresses the role of individual agents and their moti-
vation in life-span development, particularly in response to regulatory challenges during life
course transitions, radical societal change, or when experiencing substantial losses or gains.
A major topic of her recent work is the potential and limits of individual influence on social
mobility under given institutional and social-structural constraints in different societies.
Steffen Hillmert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tübingen. His research fo-
cuses on mutual relationships between life course developments, institutions and structural
changes in society, particularly the associations between education, employment and social
inequality.
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo is Associate Professor of History at the University of C oimbra.

His research focuses on the comparative and connected histories of imperialism, colonial-
ism and internationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. He currently coordinates the
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology-funded project ‘The worlds of (under)
development: processes and legacies of the Portuguese colonial empire in a comparative per-
spective (1945–1975)’.
Johan Junkka is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research
(CEDAR), Umeå University. His research uses historical data to explore how disability and
health are related to issues such as climate and social capital.
Dharmi Kapadia is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her research

focuses on racism, health, mental health and older people. She currently works with the Syn-
ergi Centre looking at racism in mental health services and is co-investigator on the Nuffield
Foundation-funded ‘Ethnic Inequalities in Later Life’ project. She is also a member of the
ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE).
xix
Contributors
Kateryna Karhina is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychosocial

Science of the University of Bergen. From 2018 to 2020, she worked as a postdoctoral re-
searcher at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and the Centre
for Demographic and Ageing Research (CEDAR) of Umeå University, where she contrib-
uted to the ‘Two centuries of inequalities: disability and partnership in Sweden’ chapter in
this volume. A social epidemiologist, her work has explored issues including special educa-
tional needs, mental health, social capital, gender and the psychological impact of military
conflict.
Martin Kohli is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute and
Distinguished Professor at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. He
has published widely on the life course, generations, ageing, fertility, inequality, intergener-
ational transfers and inheritance.
Fabian Kratz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology of the University

of Munich (LMU). His research interests include happiness, transmission of inequality, mi-
gration, spatial research and methodological issues.
Diana Kuh is Emeritus Professor of Life Course Epidemiology at University College

London (UCL). She was the founding Directors of the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and
Ageing at UCL and the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD). She
has published widely and has played a leading role in the field of life course epidemiology,
exploring how biological, psychological and social factors across life affect adult health, age-
ing and chronic disease risk.
Paul Lambert is a Professor in Sociology at the University of Stirling. His research focuses
on social stratification inequalities and on methodological issues in using statistical methods
in the social sciences.
René Levy is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Lausanne. His main re-
search interests are gender relations, life course analysis and social stratification and inequal-
ities. He is also a previous president of the Swiss Sociological Association.
Francisco Louçã is Professor of Economics at the ISEG Lisbon School of Economics &
Management of Lisbon University. His research interests include the history of economic
thought, dynamics of complex adaptive systems and the nature of long-term techno-
economic change. He was also a prominent opponent of the Estado Novo regime and is a
leading figure in the Left Bloc party in Portugal.
Karl Ulrich Mayer is Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Human Devel-
opment, and the Stanley B. Resor Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Professor at the
Institution for Social and Policy Studies of Yale University. He is also a previous president of
the Leibniz Association. His research interests include social stratification and mobility, the
life course, social demography, occupational structures and labour market processes, ageing
populations and welfare states.
Jane D. McLeod is Provost Professor of Sociology and Associate Executive Dean for the
College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. Her research focuses on stratification
xx
Contributors
and health over the life course, with current emphasis on the association of autism and other
disabilities with social and academic outcomes among college students.
Mahala Miller is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Her research explores culture, families and health with a particular focus on how families
develop beliefs and behaviours to support their children’s mental health.
Phyllis Moen is a Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she is
also the Director of the Life Course Center and holds a McKnight Presidential Chair.
Her research focuses on population, labour market, organisational, family, and life course
changes as they intersect with health, well-being, gender and other dimensions of social
disadvantage.
Jeylan T. Mortimer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

Her current research focuses on the social reproduction of inequality and shifts in the process
of attainment across generations. She is also the principal investigator of the Youth Devel-
opment Study, a multigenerational longitudinal investigation that has followed a cohort of
young people from mid-adolescence to mid-life.
Ferdinand C. Mukumbang is an acting Assistant Professor of Implementation Sciences at

the University of Washington. He specialises in health policy and systems research, partic-
ularly in the use of the complexity lens to understand health inequality and health systems
functioning.
Clara H. Mulder is Professor of Demography at the Population Research Centre of the

University of Groningen. Her research interests include migration, residential mobility,
households and family relations. She currently leads the European Research Council-funded
research project ‘Family ties that bind: A new view of internal migration, immobility and
labour-market outcomes (FamilyTies)’. She formerly edited the journal Population, Space and
Place.
James Nazroo is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He was founding

director of both the ESRC Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) and the M anchester
Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing. His research focuses on inequalities in later
life and inequalities in relation to race, racism and ethnicity.
Magda Nico is a Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology
(CIES-ISCTE) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Research Methods
in ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon. She is currently coordinating a project on the im-
portance and dynamics of ‘linked lives’ within families. Her research interests include life
course theory and methods, family histories, social mobility and the processes of inequalities.
Jessica Ozan is a Research Associate at the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit of
anchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on youth development and social
M
policy. She has previously worked on European Research Council-funded projects, includ-
ing the European Cohort Development (EDCP) and Measuring Youth Well-Being (MY-
WEB) projects. She is also a UK Evaluation Society Council member and the coordinator of
the North of England Evaluation Network.
xxi
Contributors
Gary Pollock is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He currently

coordinates the European Research Council-funded Cohort Community Research and
Development Infrastructure Network for Access Throughout Europe (COORDINATE)
project and has previously led the European Cohort Development (EDCP) and Measuring
Youth Well-Being (MYWEB) projects. His research interests include the design and analysis
of survey data on children and young people and their life trajectories, particularly using
longitudinal techniques.
Riccardo Prandini is Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at

the University of Bologna. His research focuses on family’s policies, intimate relations, local
governance and welfare systems.
Ken Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. His books
include Surviving Post-Communism: Young People in the Former Soviet Union (2000), Youth in
Transition: Eastern Europe and in the West (2009), Class in Contemporary Britain (2011), Sociology:
An Introduction (2012), The Business of Leisure (2016), Social Theory, Sport, Leisure (2016) and
Youth in Saudi Arabia (2018).
Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt is a Senior Researcher at the Federal Institute for Vocational

Education and Training. Her research focuses on vocational education and training, occupa-
tions and social inequality.
Elisabetta Ruspini is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Interdepartmental

Center for Gender Studies at the University of Milan-Bicocca. She is currently co-coordinator
of the European Sociological Association’s Women’s and Gender S tudies research network
and was previously coordinator of the Italian Sociological Association’s Gender Studies re-
search committee. Her research interests include the social construction of gender, gender
inequalities, gender and the generation turnover and feminist studies.
Ingrid Schoon is Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at the Social Research
Institute at University College London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sci-
ences (FAcSS) and the Social Science Centre (WZB) in Berlin. She is also president-elect
of the European Association for the Study of Adolescence (EARA) and has previously been
president of the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies.
Richard A. Settersten, Jr, is University Distinguished Professor of Human Development

and Barbara E. Knudson Endowed Chair in Human Development and Family Sciences at
Oregon State University, where he is also Head of the School of Social and Behavioral Sci-
ences. His research interests explore how social forces shape the human life course, particu-
larly dynamics related to age, demography, history and social relationships.
Maria Gilvania Valdivino Silva is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies
in Sociology (CIES-ISCTE) in ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon. Her research focuses
on the themes of generations, families, political socialisation, politisation, social classes and
processes of inequalities.
Timothy M. Smeeding is Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and

Economics at the La Follette School of Public Affairs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
xxii
Contributors
His interests are in child poverty, intergenerational mobility and the new child allowance
policy in the USA.
Nicolas Sommet is an SNSF Ambizione Lecturer in Social Psychology at the Swiss Centre of
Expertise in Life Course Research (Centre LIVES) of the University of Lausanne. His research
focuses on the psychological consequences of income inequality and achievement motivation.
Rafael de Freitas Souza is a PhD student at the School of Economics, Business and Ac-
counting of the University of São Paulo. His research interests include applied econometrics,
applied multivariate models and analysis of time series.
Dario Spini is Professor of Social Psychology at the Life Course and Inequality Centre
of the University of Lausanne. He is also co-Director of the Swiss Centre of Expertise in
Life Course Research (Centre LIVES). His research focuses on the life course, health and
v ulnerability processes.
Kari Stefansen is a Research Professor at Norwegian Social Research institute (NOVA) of

Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research currently focuses on youth and inequality, youth
sport parenting and sexual violence among youths. She is the principal investigator of the
Domestic Violence Research Program and co-editor of Rape in the Nordic Countries: Continu-
ity and Change (Routledge, 2019).
Sarah Stopforth is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. She also holds an Honor-
ary Research Fellow position at the Cathie Marsh Institute of the University of Manchester.
Her research interests span social stratification, inequalities and quantitative methods.
Elizabeth Thomson is Professor of Demography Emerita at Stockholm University and

Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has conducted
research on couple childbearing decisions, family structure and child well-being, and step-
family childbearing. Her recent projects have focused on links between partnership and
parenthood, including the relationship between cohabitation and family stability and com-
plexity, and the consequences of joint physical custody for parents and children.
Nicole Tieben is a Senior Lecturer at the Leibniz University Hannover. Her research in-
terests include the sociology of education, life courses, social inequality and mobility, and
quantitative methods.
Leen Vandecasteele is Associate Professor in comparative social policy and the life course
at the Life Course and Inequality Centre of the University of Lausanne. She is also associated
with the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (Centre LIVES). Her research
focuses on inequality, poverty and social policy in the life course.
Tanja Van Der Lippe is Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University and chair of the So-
cial Sciences Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research
interests are in the area of work-family linkages in Dutch and other societies.
Alyson van Raalte is the head of the Lifespan Inequalities Research Group at the Max
Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Her research uses demographic methods to ex-
plore mortality inequalities and has been published in a number of journals.
xxiii
Contributors
María do Mar Castro Varela is Professor of Pedagogy and Social Work at the Alice
Salomon University of Applied Science. Her research interests include gender and queer
studies, postcolonial theory, critical migration studies, critical education and trauma and
conspiracy studies.
Pedro Vasconcelos is a Professor in Sociology at the ISCTE-University Institute of L isbon.

His research currently focuses on issues of inequality, gender, and structural intersections and
differentiation.
Lotta Vikström is Professor of History at Umeå University, where she is also affiliated
with the Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research (CEDAR). Her work makes use of
demographic data and methods from life course perspectives to research how disability has
historically impacted participation in society.
Richard Whittle is Principal Lecturer in Economics at Manchester Metropolitan Univer-

sity. An economist with a background in behavioural and computer science, his recent work
explores digital exclusion in Greater Manchester and examines the post-pandemic future of
towns and cities. He is also part of the Academic Steering Group for the Place Based Eco-
nomic Recovery Network.
Jiao Yu is a PhD student in Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. Her research
interests include ageing and the life course, health disparities and medical sociology.
xxiv
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank each and every one of the authors for their professionalism, engagement
and patience in the making of this book, especially through the difcult COVID-19 times.
What an irony to embark on such a project on inequalities and the life course during a pan-
demic, but what an honour to have endured this in the company of such an incredible set of
social scientists.
We’d also like to thank everyone at Routledge, all of whom showed us nothing but un-
derstanding, motivation and fexibility in the process of making this book a reality.
A last enormous acknowledgement goes to Sónia Correia. Her organisation, professional-
ism and friendship were the piece that fnally made the book a whole.
xxv
Section 1
Inequalities as process
Doing inequalities over the life course
Inequalities are processes, and not static measurable circumstances. They are in the making
over the life course, interacting with each other, accumulating, attenuating, reproducing or
spinning off along the way.
Inequalities are, in this sense, trajectories. They depart from certain origin or identity
categories and positions and are produced within the interlocking of different lives and in-
stitutions, in the interstices of the agentic capabilities, and cultural and historical constraints
and possibilities of the individual lives. Inequalities are inherently individual trajectories,
but they are also class trajectories, family trajectories, gender trajectories, ethnic trajectories,
cohort or generation trajectories. The process of production and reproduction of inequalities
occurs at different yet intertwined life course levels and principles. At the individual level,
where the “agency” of the individuals performs an important role in the awareness, position-
ing and “strategic adaptation” at the face of acknowledged inequalities. At various meso and
interactional levels, namely the one of family and other significant networks, exemplar at dis-
playing the importance of the interdependency of lives (captured by the life course principle
of “linked lives”). And at macro-levels, where the “cultural and historical location” is at all
times present not only to contextualize but to explain and provide meaning to the objective
and subjective conditions of living and the inequalities, disparities and injustices that operate
in its making, may they concern to global phenomena appropriated differently in each state
or territory (take the pandemic for example) or to certain socially and culturally produced
categories that imprint individuals with life time sentences to exclusion, discrimination and
a burden of inequalities to begin with. The understanding of inequalities has, thus, much to
gain from using this multi-level and dynamic approach to the course of inequalities across
time. This involves the need to abandon the monopoly of sophisticated yet aggregated (and
static at the individual level) inequalities indicators, measures and scales, and tackling in-
equalities as compositions of different social vulnerabilities, layers and categories moving
through cultural and historical time.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429470059-1
In a reverse but corresponding approach, the life course is the window for doing inequalities.
This means that a fxation with current cohorts, current data, current phenomena, on the
one hand, and with fxed – non-rarely incomparable – social categories of understanding
social reality, on the other, prevents the analysis of the very making of inequalities, rather
than its outcome, consequences or aggregated oscillations. Inequalities end up not being
captured longitudinally and become a hostage of the aggregated and time self-contained in-
dicators this feld created. Inequalities need to be tackled longitudinally, and at the individual
level, because that is how they are produced and that is how they can be understood, and,
in some cases, that is how they get publicly recognized, legitimized, repaired and dealt with
politically – both ideologically and in practice through policy.
This is the argument made individually and collectively by the contributions to this sec-
tion, but it is also one that is transversal to the whole book and that lies behind the need to
bridge, theoretically, empirically and methodologically, life course and inequality research.
The understanding of inequalities will gain insight that only the analysis through time can
give to a process of making and remaking, and life course research will begin to set itself free
from an exclusive relation with a generational approach that may exclude a classist or strati-
fed approach to the study of life. Class and generation must be partners and not competitors
in the study of inequalities, as they are in social mobility, poverty and other areas that have al-
ways been at the crossroads of inequalities and the life course. These bridges are not new. Life
course research and inequality studies are not strangers to one another – health inequalities,
educational, gender or ethnic studies, social mobility testify the interdisciplinary approach
in this regard – but they have been estranged for too long. This book, fnished during a pan-
demic that put inequalities over the life course and the importance of the interdependency of
lives into the spotlight, intends to explicitly, convincingly and publicly reconcile these two
perspectives. In this section, four chapters contribute to this endeavour.
In the frst chapter, Dannefer, Han and Yu revisited and reviewed two often regarded
as contrasting approaches towards the increase in economic inequality over the last decade:
the sociological cumulative dis/advantage (CDA) approach, and the use of the psychosocial
accentuation – a psychological notion – to argue for the importance of talent and efort in
the production of those inequalities over time. In this chapter, the authors thus implicitly ac-
claim the internal interdisciplinary debate of life course research. Departing from a complex
cohort-based comparison (that takes into account intra-cohort heterogeneity), the authors
openly analyse what each, both, these approaches have to bring to the table of the under-
standing of inequalities. In a discussion echoing old and always new discussions on “agency
and structure”, “biography and society”, tackled here by the use of a multilevel approach,
the authors also conclude that the cumulation of inequalities “is in some cases overridden by
deliberate social interventions designed to produce such an efect, and can be ameliorated by
policies designed to do so”. If this is an optimist conclusion, only the future of policy-making
and political-ideological drive can tell.
Pollock, Ozan and Goswami then highlight the inherently philanthropic character of the
study of inequalities and its potential relation to policy. The authors argue that the “analysis
of inequalities in itself is of greatest value when it is able to contribute to societal improve-
ment”, but that is a closer, more sustainable, longitudinal engagement between social policy –
and the process of making of such policy and scientifc evidence is required. The authors
argue this engagement is not undirected, with both policy and political needs feeding the sci-
entifc agenda. This relationship should be durable and committed – longitudinal. It should
work in tides, with policy being designed according to evidenced inequalities and, in this
chapter’s case, the impact on the well-being of growing children, followed by the potential of
2
Inequalities as process
data analysis to provide an assessment of the impacts of such policy. The long-term, lagged,
repetitive, continuous or sustainable impacts must be understood. This can only be per-
formed with longitudinal research.
Ruspini’s chapter departs from the study of inequality, as a complex, interdisciplinary,
everlasting and moving concept and research field that is far from being truly tackled. This is
so due to the rise of inequality both between and within countries, the failure of political and
policy response to such humanitarian and social quests from individuals and families, and the
persistence of gender inequalities and growing inequalities between generations. Looking at
inequality as a multidimensional, relative and dynamic issue, Ruspini provides in her chapter
a critical and complete overview on the analysed inequalities in respect to its dynamic nature,
its implicit generational approach and its processual dimension. In the last section, Ruspini
advocates the idea of a consequential analysis of inequalities, with Ruspini arguing that
anyone hoping to design appropriate and effective policies to promote equity should
have a clear understanding of past and present inequality dynamics and on how old and
new, local and global, micro and macro determinants of inequality connect and interact.
But that is not the only reason why the study of inequalities should be longitudinal, with a
micro-dynamics focus of doing inequalities (our expression). So does the very process of indi-
vidually enduring, reacting against, and responding to, inequalities.
Vandecasteele, Spini, Sommet and Bühlmann use poverty, a proxy of inequalities, to
tackle and highlight the potential of a life course approach in the improvement of the needed
understanding of the dynamic patterns. Complementing the perspectives on macro-level
results and policies, the authors implicitly highlight the importance of “linked lives”, an
important life course principle. These links are not solely between individuals but are also
between spheres of life, with what authors elaborate with the “spill-over effects” of poverty,
where other life domains are deeply affected by the economic deprivation and insecurity,
and its durable nature; and with the multidimensional, potentially interdisciplinary, nature
of such phenomena, tackling how “objective poverty definitions and subjective perceptions
of scarcity influence people’s vulnerability”.
Together, the chapters in this section advocate that the bridge between life course research
and inequalities has the potential to be one extremely efficacious way to provide sustainable
and truly consequential understandings of the production and cumulation of inequalities and
of where, in that process, policy interventions are badly needed – in real time.
3
1
Inequality across time
Social change, biography, and the life course
Dale Dannefer, Chengming Han, and Jiao Yu
Introduction
Over recent decades, social inequality and its consequences have become difficult for both
social science and the general public to ignore as substantial increases in overall economic
inequality have been observed in numerous advanced industrial societies.
A prime example is the USA, where incomes of the top 1% have more than tripled over
the past half century, while those of the bottom 50% have remained stagnant. One result of
these diverging trendlines is that the total share of national income garnered by the bottom
half of the US population declined sharply – from just over 20% to about 12% – while that
of the top 1% grew from 12% to 20% (Piketty, Saez, & Zucman, 2016) – meaning that these
two groups essentially traded places in the proportion of national income received. Other na-
tions reporting increases in inequality include Canada (Beach, 2016), Japan (Lise et al., 2014),
Korea (Hwang, 2016), and European societies including Sweden (Mosquera et al., 2016).
While in some cases these increases may reflect compositional effects and other complex in-
teractions, the overriding reality of increasing inequality and concentrated wealth accumula-
tion have become widely recognized realities and concerns across much of the industrialized
world. Contrary to hopes for democratization from the information and communication
access provided by the internet, many thoughtful scholars expect the digital revolution to
exacerbate such trends and related problems (Eubanks, 2018; Foer, 2017).
Inequality in resources translates into inequality in other domains, such as health and
family stability (Payne, 2017; Therborn, 2012). Evidence has continued to accumulate in
support of Link and Phelan’s identification of socio-economic status as the ‘fundamental
cause’ of health inequalities (Phelan, Link, & Tehranifar, 2010, p. 29). This linkage has
many dimensions, including health-related knowledge of everyday life circumstances and
practices. Such practices include alcohol and tobacco use, lack of exercise and unhealthy
diets (Loef & Walach, 2012). For example, Nash and colleagues (2017) report that smokers
present three times higher mortality than those who never smoke. In the USA, a Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) survey indicated that persons with lower education and those who
live below the federal poverty line are more likely to smoke cigarettes. The prevalence of
current smoking for persons over 25 is 28.5% among high school dropouts, but only 5.6%
DOI: 10.4324/9780429470059-2 4
among those with a graduate degree (CDC, 2012). Moreover, quitting smoking successfully
is also related to SES (Hiscock, Judge, & Bauld, 2011). Thus, smoking is not only an individ-
ual health practice; it also refects social class and cultural realities. Subjective well-being and
social relations are added consequential factors that are linked to SES (Umberson & Montez,
2010; Veenstra, 2000).
These general societal trends intersect the analysis of age and the life course in at least
two major dimensions. The frst of these concerns long-term historical changes in the status of
specifc age groups, illustrated by an analysis of trends in old-age poverty and inequality and
also by recent attention to trends in childhood adversity (Hughes et al., 2017; O’Rand &
Hamil-Luker, 2005). The second way in which inequality intersects the life course focuses
on the cohort as the unit of analysis. Here, the age-inequality relation is dynamic yet quite
predictable and entails systemic tendencies toward inequality generation that operate in everyday
life, constituting a regular feature of cohort aging.
Increasing diversity and increasing inequality over the life course

The cohort-based analysis of the age-inequality relationship is signifcant both empirically
and theoretically: empirically, because it represents a robust, obdurate tendency of cohort
aging, and theoretically, because it refects and reveals the inequality-generating tendencies
of basic, everyday social processes that operate independently of social and historical change.
Especially in strongly age-graded societies such as those of late modernity, the movement of
a cohort through its collective life course interacts with social system dynamics to generate
inequalities in the developmental potentials of age peers – fellow cohort members – in a
predictable way. These systemic tendencies recur in each succeeding cohort, producing re-
markably similar patterns of age-related inequality across cohorts.
In gerontology and life course studies, an appreciation of these concepts began with
interests in a distinctly diferent, albeit related, phenomenon – the ‘diversity of the aged’.
In the face of typifcations of older people by negative stereotypes and other sweeping
generalizations, in the 1980s gerontologists began to emphasize the diversity and ‘het-
erogeneity’ of elders. This emphasis was presaged in Maddox and Douglass’s early lon-
gitudinal analysis (1974; see also Baltes, 1979; Neugarten, 1982; Riley, 1980) and was
a featured premise of the rise of the notion of ‘successful aging’ (Rowe & Kahn, 1987,
1997). Considerable empirical evidence supports the proposition that elders are the most
heterogeneous of any age group (e.g., Nelson & Dannefer, 1992; Stone, Lin, Dannefer, &
Kelley-Moore, 2017).
As this ‘heterogeneity’ narrative developed, however, some researchers became concerned
that the oft-celebratory characterization as a benign indicator of ‘alternative paths’ and ‘suc-
cessful aging’ neglected to note that much of the celebrated ‘diversity’ among the members of
older cohorts actually refected social inequality. As a result, some scholars framed the issue in
terms of life course trajectories of inequality, examined over the cohort’s collective life course
(Crystal & Waehrer, 1996; Dannefer, 1988).
The frst such analyses of which we are aware demonstrated remarkably robust patterns of
age-related increases in income inequality in the USA, over multiple cohorts. For example,
Figure 1.1 presents life course trajectories of inequality for seven birth cohorts (see Dannefer &
Sell, 1988). Numerous other researchers have presented data from diverse sources indicating
a similar pattern (Crystal & Shea, 1990; Dannefer, 2022; O’Rand, 1996). The robustness of
this pattern seemed to make clear that, at least in the USA, increasing inequality appears as
an integral aspect of cohort aging,
5
Dale Dannefer et al.
Figure 1.1 Theil’s measure of inequality for family income by age of head in seven birth co-
horts (observation periods 1947, 1957, 1967, 1977)
Source: Dannefer and Sell 1988 (adapted from Treas, n.d.).
If inequality reliably tends to increase from the early developmental years onward and across
the life course, it is a phenomenon with multiple implications for understanding aging and
the life course. Perhaps the frst of these is simply to acknowledge that this cohort-based phe-
nomenon points to the principle that a tendency toward inequality generation is a regular feature of
development and aging. If it is the case that increasing inequality is a regular feature of aging, then
a second implication is the inadequacy of a preoccupation with ‘normative’ or ‘normal’ aging as a way
of characterizing aging. Any such efort at age-based generalization must be acknowledged to
be clearly misleading or incomplete, since one element of normal aging is a predictable decrease
in homogeneity or normativity itself. A third implication of the reality of increasing inequality
with age concerns the unavoidable questions of causal explanation that it raises: why should this be?
What forces underlie this apparently robust pattern of cohort aging?
Increasing inequality, cumulative dis/advantage and social processes

When one considers what actually occurs in the everyday processes of social life through
which society is constituted, it becomes clear that mechanisms of cumulative dis/advantage
are central to understanding this phenomenon. Cumulative dis/advantage (CDA) can be
6
defned as ‘the systemic tendency for interindividual divergence in a given characteristic to

increase with the passage of time’ (Dannefer, 2003, 2020), in which social position becomes
a resource (either positive or negative) that has its own independent efects on subsequent
outcomes (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006; Rigney, 2010).
Mechanisms of cumulative dis/advantage operate at multiple levels of social analysis. Be-
ginning with the macro-level, many examples of how social policy has impacted patterns
of trajectories of inequality can be identifed, either ameliorating or exacerbating the ten-
dencies toward inequality-generation. For example, the expansion of public pensions over
the 20th century has greatly reduced old-age poverty and hardship, and may have reduced
inequality as well. However, educational policies and practices that ensure the reproduction
of economically stratifed schools and laws of inheritance tend to reinforce existing patterns
of socio-economic stratifcation, and strengthening it over the life course. Of course, the ef-
fects of such policies are not equally distributed through the population, but often reinforce
existing race-based, cultural and other axes of stratifcation (e.g., Oliver & Shapiro, 2006;
Shapiro, 2017).
At the meso level, such mechanisms take myriad forms. In many bureaucracies and
other formal organizations, hierarchy structure combines with a ‘culture of mobility’
(e.g., Kanter, 1993) to drive inequality generation, as employees are expected to move
‘upward’ in a steadily narrowing pyramidal structure that constricts opportunities for
upward movements. Such dynamics often interact with employee characteristics and de-
mography (e.g., race or sex composition of workforce) in complex ways. From such com-
plexity has been distilled principles that reveal the impact of social processes on individual
life chances, e.g., via tokenism (Datta & Bhardwaj, 2015; Kanter, 1993; Kelly, 2007;
Zimmer, 1988) and tournament mobility (Coles, Li, & Wang, 2018; Rosenbaum, 1989).
Readers familiar with literature on gender in organizations will know that the analysis
of tokenism is concerned with the implications for social interaction of the composition
of the schoolroom or workplace population. Tournament mobility – referring to the
tendency to reward success, and disqualify the less successful – is a documented mech-
anism of stratifcation in school tracking (e.g., Lucas & Good, 2001; Rosenbaum, 1978)
and organizational mobility regimes (Kanter, 1993; Rosenbaum, 1989). Such meso-level
mechanisms are especially clear and potent in hierarchical organizations (such as mod-
ern bureaucracies) that combine requirements (as in schooling) or aspirations (as in the
workplace) of individual mobility on one hand, with organizational structures that limit
opportunities for desired mobility on the other (Dannefer, 2008).
Recently, increasing attention has been paid to neighborhood-level factors (Kelley,
Dannefer, & Al Masarweh, 2018; Thomése, Bufel, & Phillipson, 2018), and their relation to
health. The efects of neighborhood factors are multi-dimensional. First, people living in a
disadvantaged neighborhood have limited access to healthy foods, but readily available fast
food restaurants, liquor stores and places to buy cigarettes (Cummins & Macintyre, 2006).
Second, neighborhood also shapes residents’ access to local amenities such as recreation fa-
cilities (Kaczynski & Henderson, 2008), exercise facilities (Powell, Slater, Chaloupka, &
Harper, 2006) and health-care services (Kirby & Kaneda, 2005). Third, issues of physical dis-
order, crime and safety are associated with stress and depression (Kelley-Moore et al., 2016;
Morenof, Sampson, & Raudenbush, 2001; Sampson, Morenof, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002).
Community networks, health-related attitudes and knowledge also infuence individuals’
health (Hystad & Carpiano, 2012). Neighborhoods with high socio-economic status typi-
cally have more health enhancement features, whereas the concentration of disease burdens
in low-income disproportional plagues the low SES residents.
7
At the micro-level, the beginnings of CDA are evident with stratification in the de-
velopment of vocabulary knowledge and language skills. Although language ability is im-
portant for cognitive development, opportunities for language learning are not evenly
distributed among all children. For example, in their longitudinal study of 42 families,
psychologists, Hart and Risley (2003), found dramatic and growing gaps in vocabulary
learning and word knowledge in the first four years of life between children from pro-
fessional families and those from poor families which are reflected in comparable gaps in
academic and test performance and language skills between children from different back-
grounds (Hart & Risley, 1995, p.11).
Throughout the life course, the effects of labeling and similar interactional processes
generate expectation states, which in turn help regulate opportunities for education, work,
health-care access and even peer networks (Angermeyer & Matschinger, 2003; Dar & Resh,
2018). Such effects, which are part of the appraisals and other aspects of self-concept, thereby
affecting one’s sense of possibilities for action immediacy of everyday experience, can be
internalized and serve to inform one’s self (or agency) (Bengtson, 1973; Dannefer & Siders,
2013; Kanter, 1993).
Taken together, such macro-, meso- and micro-level processes offer an account of CDA
that is both plausible and rich with potential implications for policy and practice in fields such
as education, health care and elder care.
Increasing inequality and individual-level

variability: psychosocial accentuation
It is important to recognize that a sociological approach emphasizing CDA and related pro-
cesses is not the only postulated explanation for the phenomenon of increasing inequality
over the life course. Those who start from paradigmatic assumptions that emphasize indi-
vidual-level causation have proposed various versions of psychosocial accentuation to account
for increasing inequality. Accentuation refers to the idea that fixed characteristics that one
is born with or acquires early in life become amplified with the passage of time, creating
greater individuality and interindividual divergence as people age (Dannefer, 1987; Elder,
1969). Across disciplines, psychosocial accentuation has long been emphasized as an expla-
nation of divergence in life course patterns. A well-known example is John Clausen’s (1993)
argument that ‘planful competence’ – an orientation developed early in the life course – sets
individuals on the path to success.
More recently, interest in accentuation-type explanations for increasing interindividual
divergence and inequality has taken many forms. These include approaches that emphasize
the fateful impact of early childhood (‘latency’, ‘critical period’ or ‘fetal origins’) (see, e.g.,
Barker, 1998; Keating & Hertzman, 1999), and ‘predictive adaptive response’, which suggests
that metabolic and hormonal parameters are set by early childhood (Gluckman & Hanson,
2006).
Dynamic processes, competing explanations

Thus, two distinctly different approaches to accounting for the phenomenon of increasing
inequality with age have been ambitiously advanced: an individual-level approach that pre-
supposes stable personal characteristics that are amplified over time through individual-level
developmental processes, and a sociogenic approach that recognizes the systemic power of
everyday social processes to generate ‘individual differences’ and inequalities.
8
The competing explanatory claims of these two approaches can be difcult to adjudicate,
because in the empirical world they are continuously and intricately interactive. A good
example is the setting of elementary school, where impressions and expectations formed by
teachers become the basis for stratifying students with the classroom, with consequences for
the opportunities they have to acquire knowledge and skills. Students, in turn, are often
aware of how they are appraised. For better or worse, the internalization of such appraisals
informs one’s sense of her own potentials, and afects subsequent performance. The dynamic
efects of interaction in daily life on both individual development and future opportunities
have been similarly documented in many other settings including school tracking systems
(Ballarino & Panichella, 2016; Parker, Jerrim, Schoon, & Marsh, 2016; Rosenbaum, 1978),
workplace interactions (e.g., Kanter, 1993), organizational age norms and promotion regimes
(Hermanowicz, 2011; Lawrence, 1988), and medical and nursing home settings (Abramson,
2015; Gubrium, 1975; Shura, Siders, & Dannefer, 2011). Across these settings, social struc-
ture allocates individuals into age-graded roles and determines their diferential access to
resources. Thus, in such settings, social processes amplify the initial inequalities and produce
divergent health outcomes and income inequality in later life. But to what extent do such
interactions themselves actually determine individual outcomes, and to what extent are they
merely the consequence of the actions of individuals who are treated in accordance with their
pre-existing and stable levels of cognitive, social and other skills?
Across time and place: comparative analysis

A key strategy for illuminating this general question – a question of how to account for
intra-cohort trajectories of inequality – can be efciently addressed by extending beyond a
single cohort. Specifcally, it is a question that can be addressed by making inter-cohort and
cross-national comparisons, both of which lift the analysis to a comparative level. In relation
to the question at hand, such analyses can be quite revealing. For if cumulative dis/advantage
is simply the result of the reservoir of individual ‘natural talent’ and organismically based
characteristics that is normally distributed in the population and chance circumstances of
each succeeding cohort, one would expect to fnd essentially the same distribution and pat-
tern with little variation in every society, as a function of nature and the laws of probability.
If, however, social processes and culturally variable practices play a role in the production of
CDA, one would expect to fnd at least some degree of variability in CDA across cultures.
What does the evidence say?
Despite the robustness of patterned trajectories of increasing inequality under the stable
regime of an advanced capitalist economy, considerable variation can be observed within
such economies over time, and they can also be seen across diferent societies character-
ized by somewhat diferent economic dynamics and diferent policies of taxation and social
welfare.
To take the latter examples frst, it appears that in Japan inequality increases with age,
much like the USA (Seiyama, 2009). However, scholars have found that in more liberal
countries with strong welfare states, inequality may remain stable or even decline. For exam-
ple, Prus (2000) found a reduction in the rate of increase of intra-cohort income inequality
with age in Canada in 1973–1996. According to Prus (2000), this decrease resulted from the
increased income in retirement provided by the public pension program in Canada, a pro-
gram that is clearly benefcial to those with low income.
Health-related quality of life is associated with household income in the USA; however,
it is less strongly related to income in societies with national health-care programs, including
9
Canada (Huguet, Kaplan, & Feeny, 2008) and Denmark (Hofmann, 2008). This diference
is related to national diferences in social policies that afect adults in midlife and old age.
For instance, Canada provides social programs over the life course, such as childcare, edu-
cation saving programs, and employment insurance (Government of Canada, 2005), social
safety net, in the form of pension system, social security and the Old Age Security pro-
gram (Huguet, Kaplan, & Feeny, 2008). Such programs ameliorated but did not eliminate
the socio-economic gradient in health. Huisman, Kunst and their colleagues (2003, 2004)
focused on declining inequality in morbidity and mortality in 11 European countries and
regions. They found that across countries inequalities tend to decline in old age, but they do
not disappear. Similarly, Herd’s (2006) analysis of the Health and Retirement Study in the
USA found that the gap of functional health disparities between college graduates and those
with no high school degrees widened until age 63, but then starts to diminish.
By contrast, a recent longitudinal study in Sweden (Mosquera et al., 2016) found that the
inequality in cardiovascular disease (CVD) increased from middle age to old age in a Sweden
cohort. They found that income was an important factor to health inequalities.
A second comparative axis investigates changes in trajectories of inequality within a given
society, across cohorts. A recent example of this is an analysis of inter-cohort changes in
intra-cohort inequality conducted by Crystal, Shea and Reyes (2017). Comparing income
inequality in the USA between 1983–1984 and 2010, they found that over this time period,
income inequality increased both for the general population and for those 65+. Cohorts who
reached ages 65+ by 2010 (born generally during the Great Depression and World War II)
and those reaching ages 55–64 in 2010 (leading-edge baby boomers) experienced the steep-
est increases in income inequality. Cohorts who were younger than 55 years in 2010 also
encounter increasing income inequality, but for them, the increases in inequality appear less
sharp, because they start from considerably higher levels of inequality in midlife, compared
with those who reached 55 in the 1980s.
Conclusion
For life course scholars, the general increase in economic inequality evident over the last sev-
eral decades has prompted renewed attention to the long-observed pattern of within-cohort
increases in inequality over the life course. We reviewed two contrasting paradigmatic ap-
proaches to accounting for this robust intra-cohort pattern: a sociological approach based on
the concept of cumulative dis/advantage that locates the genesis of intra-cohort inequality
within social processes operating at multiple levels of social organization, and a psychological
approach deriving from the concept of psychosocial accentuation to account for life course
patterns of divergence and increasing inequality. One way of assessing the explanatory value
of these two approaches is to examine whether trajectories of inequality vary as condi-
tions change, or whether they remain stable across fuctuations in historical or sociocultural
conditions.
Evidence aforded by comparative analysis – whether across societies or across historical
time within a society – suggests that increasing inequality is not an inevitable result of the
distribution of talent or other features in a population, and that it cannot be reduced to the
individual level. Rather, intra-cohort trajectories of inequality appear to vary with social
circumstances and conditions. Thus, we suggest that while the inequality-generating mech-
anisms that are inherent in social life continue to operate, the tendency for inequality to
cumulate is in some cases overridden by deliberate social interventions designed to produce
such an efect, and can be ameliorated by policies designed to do so. Prus’ (2000) fndings
10
regarding Canada well illustrate this point, as do the long-term reductions in old-age poverty
achieved in the USA and other societies over the 20th century, as a result of the institution-
alization of pension plans.
Thus, the observed cross-societal and historical variations in patterns of inequality pro-
duction make clear that social knowledge, practices, policies and other social circumstances
all are likely to play a role in the regulation of inequality-generating mechanisms, pointing
clearly to a signifcant role for policy in addressing problems generated by processes of cumu-
lative dis/advantage (Dannefer, Han, & Kelley, 2018–2019). While psychosocial accentuation
may play a role in the actions taken by individuals and how those actions are received and
evaluated, it cannot account for the predictable patterning of socially organized variation in
trajectories of intra-cohort inequality.
It appears clear that such observed patterns of increasing inequality in both resources and
health should not be regarded as fxed and inevitable. Evidence from multiple societies makes
clear that the implementation of efective programs designed to ameliorate the most humanly
destructive efects of tendencies toward increasing inequality can have an impact on patterns
of inequality and its tendency for it to increase with age.
Bibliography
Abramson, C. M. (2015). The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Angermeyer, M. C. & Matschinger, H. (2003). The Stigma of Mental Illness: Efects of Labelling
on Public Attitudes towards People with Mental Disorder. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 108(4),
304–309.
Ballarino, G. & Panichella, N. (2016). Social Stratifcation, Secondary School Tracking and University
Enrolment in Italy. Contemporary Social Science. 11(2–3), 169–182.
Baltes, P. B. (1979). Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Some Converging Observations on History
and Theory. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim Jr, eds., Life-Span Development and Behavior. Vol. 2 (pp.
255–279). New York: Academic Press.
Barker, D. J. (1998). In Utero Programming of Chronic Disease. Clinical Science. 95(2), 115–128.
Beach, C. M. (2016). Changing Income Inequality: A Distributional Paradigm for Canada. Canadian
Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’économique. 49(4), 1229–1292.
Bengtson, V. L. (1973). The Social Psycholgoy of Aging. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2012). Current Cigarette Smoking among Adults-
United States, 2011. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). 61, 889–894.
Clausen, J. (1993). American Lives Looking Back at the Children of the Great Depression. First Edition. New
York: Free Press.
Coles, J. L., Li, Z. F., & Wang, A. Y. (2018). Industry Tournament Incentives. The Review of Financial
Studies. 31(4), 1418–1459.
Crystal, S. & Shea, D. (1990). Cumulative Advantage, Cumulative Disadvantage, and Inequality
among Elderly People. The Gerontologist. 30(4), 437–443.
Crystal, S., Shea, D., & Reyes, A. M. (2017). Cumulative Advantage, Cumulative Disadvantage, and
Evolving Patterns of Late-Life Inequality. The Gerontologist. 57(5), 910–920.
Crystal, S. & Waehrer, K. (1996). Later-Life Economic Inequality in Longitudinal Perspective. The
Journals of Gerontology: Series B. 51B (6), S307–S318.
Cummins, S. & Macintyre, S. (2006). Food Environments and Obesity—Neighbourhood or Nation?
International Journal of Epidemiology. 35(1), 100–104.
Dannefer, D. (1987). Aging as Intra-cohort Diferentiation: Accentuation, the Matthew Efect, and the
Life Course. Sociological Forum. 2, 211–236.
Dannefer, D. (1988). Diferential Gerontology and the Stratifed Life Course: Conceptual and Meth-
odological Issues. In G. L. Maddox & M. P. Lawton, eds., Varieties of Aging (pp. 3–36). Berlin,
Heidelberg: Springer.
Dannefer, D. (2003). Cumulative Advantage/Disadvantage and the Life Course: Cross-Fertilizing Age
and Social Science Theory. Journals of Gerontology Social Sciences. 58(6), S327–S337.
11
Dannefer, D. (2008). The Waters We Swim: Everyday Social Processes, Macro-Structural Realities,
and Human Aging. In K. W. Schaie & R. P. Abeles, eds., Social Structure and Aging: Continuing Chal-
lenges (pp. 3–22). New York: Springer.
Dannefer, D. (2020). Systemic and Refexive: Foundations of Cumulative Dis/Advantage and Life
course Processes. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 75(6), 1249–1263.
Dannefer, D. (2022). Age and the Reach of Sociological Imagination: Power, Ideology and the Life Course. New
York: Routledge.
Dannefer, D, Chengming, H., & Kelley, J. (2018–2019). Beyond the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots’. Gener-
ations. 42(4), 42–49.
Dannefer, D. & Sell, R., R. (1988). Age Structure, the Life Course and ‘Aged Heterogeneity’: Pros-
pects for Research and Theory. Comprehensive Gerontology. Section B, Behavioural, Social, and Applied
Sciences. 2(1), 1–10.
Dannefer, D. & Siders, R. A. (2013). Social Structure, Social Change and the Cycle of Induced Soli-
darity. In M. Silverstein & R. Giarusso, eds., Kinship and Cohort in an Aging Society: From Generation
to Generation (pp. 284–292). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dar, Y. & Resh, N. (2018). Classroom Composition and Pupil Achievement (1986): A Study of the Efect of
Ability-Based Classes. London: Routledge.
Datta, S. & Bhardwaj, G. (2015). Study of Impact of Gender Typing of Occupation on the Experienced
Sex Role Confict. Indian Journal of Community Psychology. 11(2), 259–276.
DiPrete, T. A. & Eirich, G. M. (2006). Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality: A Re-
view of Theoretical and Empirical Developments. Annual Review of Sociology. 32(1), 271–297.
Elder Jr., G. H. (1969). Occupational Mobility, Life Patterns, and Personality. Journal of Health and Social
Behavior. 10(4), 308–323.
Eubanks, V. (2018). Automoating Inequality: How High-Tech Tolls Profle, Police and Punish the Poor. New
York: St. Martins.
Falletta, L. & Dannefer, D. (2014). The Life Course and the Social Organization of Age. In Jane
Macleod, Edward J. Lawler & Michael Schwalbe, eds., Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality
(pp. 607–625). New York: Springer.
Foer, F. (2017). World without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. New York: Penguin Books.
Gluckman, P. & Hanson, M. (2006). Mismatch: Why Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies. Oxford, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Government of Canada, (2005). Income Security Program. http://www.sdc.gc.ca/en/gateways/nav/
top_nav/program/isp.shtml. Accessed 06.06.06.
Gubrium, J. F. (1975). Living and Dying at Murray Manor. New York: St. Martins.
Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaning ful Diferences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Chil-
dren. Baltimore, MD: Paul H Brookes Publishing,
Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (2003). The Early Catastrophe—the 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3. American
Educator. 27(1), 4–9.
Herd, P. (2006). Do Functional Health Inequalities Decrease in Old Age? Educational Status and
Functional Decline Among the 1931–1941 Birth Cohort. Research on Aging. 28(3), 375–392.
Hermanowicz, J. C. (2011). The American Academic Profession: Transformation in Contemporary Higher Ed-
ucation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
Hiscock, R., Judge, K., & Bauld, L. (2011). Social Inequalities in Quitting Smoking: What Factors
Mediate the Relationship between Socioeconomic Position and Smoking Cessation? Journal of Pub-
lic Health. 33(1), 39–47.
Hofmann, R. (2008). Socioeconomic Diferences in Old Age Mortality. Springer: The Netherlands.
Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Hardcastle, K. A., Sethi, D., Butchart, A., Mikton, C., Jones, L., & Dunne,
M. P. (2017). The Efect of Multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences on Health: A Systematic Re-
view and Meta-Analysis. The Lancet Public Health. 2(8), 356–366.
Huguet, N., Kaplan, M. S., & Feeny, D. (2008). Socioeconomic Status and Health-Related Quality of
Life among Elderly People: Results from the Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health. Social
Science & Medicine. 66(4), 803–810.
Huisman, M., Kunst, A. E., Andersen, O., Bopp, M., Borgan, J. K., Borrell, C., Costa, G., Deboosere,
P., Desplanques, G., Donkin, A., Gadeyne, S., Minder, C., Regidor, E, Spadea, T., Valkonen, T.,
Mackenbach, J. P. (2004). Socioeconomic Inequalities in Mortality among Elderly People in 11
European Populations. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 58(6), 468–475. https://doi.
org/10.1136/jech.2003.010496.
12
Huisman, M., Kunst, A. E., & Mackenbach, J. P. (2003). Socioeconomic Inequalities in Morbidity
among the Elderly; a European Overview. Social Science & Medicine. 57(5), 861–873.
Hwang, S-J. (2016). Public Pensions as the Great Equalizer? Decomposition of Old-Age Income In-
equality in South Korea, 1998–2010. Journal of Aging & Social Policy. 28(2), 81–97.
Hystad, P. & Carpiano, R. M. (2012). Sense of Community-Belonging and Health-Behaviour Change
in Canada. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 66(3), 277–283.
Kaczynski, A. T. & Henderson, K. A. (2008). Parks and Recreation Settings and Active Living: A
Review of Associations With Physical Activity Function and Intensity. Journal of Physical Activity
and Health. 5(4), 619–632.
Kanter, R. M. (1993). Men and Women of the Corporation. Second Edition. New York: Basic Books.
Keating, D. P. & Hertzman, C., eds. (1999). Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations: Social, Bio-
logical, and Educational Dynamics. New York: Guilford Press.
Kelley, J., Dannefer, D., & Al Masarweh, L. (2018). Addressing Erasure, Microfcation and So-
cial Change: Age-Friendly Initiatives and Environmental Gerontology in the 21st Century. In
T. Bufel, H. Sophie & C. Phillipson, eds., Age-Friendly Cities and Communities – a Global Perspective
(pp. 51–69). Bristol: Policy Press.
Kelley-Moore, J. A., Cagney, K. A., Skarupski, K. A., Everson-Rose, S. A., & Mendes de Leon, C. F.
(2016). Do Local Social Hierarchies Matter for Mental Health? A Study of Neighborhood Social Status
and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. 71(2), 369–377.
Kelly, H. (2007). Racial Tokenism in the School Workplace: An Exploratory Study of Black Teachers
in Overwhelmingly White Schools. International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology. 5(1),
230–254.
Kirby, J. B. & Kaneda, T. (2005). Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Access to Health
Care. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 46(1), 15–31.
Lawrence, B. S. (1988). New Wrinkles in the Theory of Age: Demography, Norms, and Performance
Ratings. The Academy of Management Journal. 31(2), 309–337.
Lise, J., Sudo, N., Suzuki, M., Yamada, K., & Yamada, T. (2014). Wage, Income and Consumption
Inequality in Japan, 1981–2008: From Boom to Lost Decades. Review of Economic Dynamics. 17(4),
582–612.
Loef, M. & Walach, H. (2012). The combined efects of healthy lifestyle behaviors on all cause mortal-
ity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Preventive Medicine. 55, 163–170.
Lucas, S. R. & Good, A. D. (2001). Race, Class, and Tournament Track Mobility. Sociology of Education.
74(2), 139–156.
Maddox, G. L. & Douglass, E. B. (1974). Aging and Individual Diferences: A Longitudinal Analysis of
Social, Psychological, and Physiological Indicators. Journal of Gerontology. 29(5), 555–563.
Morenof, J. D., Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2001). Neighborhood Inequality, Collective
Efcacy, and the Spatial Dynamics of Urban Violence. Criminology. 39(3), 517–558.
Mosquera, P. A., San Sebastian, M., Waenerlund, A. K., Ivarsson, A., Weinehall, L., & Gustafsson,
P. E. (2016). Income-Related Inequalities in Cardiovascular Disease from Mid-Life to Old Age in
a Northern Swedish Cohort: a Decomposition Analysis. Social Science & Medicine. 149, 135–144.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.12.017.
Nash, S. H., Liao, L. M., Harris, T. B., & Freedman, N. D. (2017). Cigarette Smoking and Mortality
in Adults Aged 70 Years and Older: Results from the NIH-AARP Cohort. American Journal of Pre-
ventive Medicine. 52(3), 276–283. DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2016.09.036.
Nelson, E. A. & Dannefer, D. (1992). Aged Heterogeneity: Fact of Fiction? The Fate of Diversity in
Gerontological Research. The Gerontologist. 32, 17–23.
Neugarten, B. L. (1982). Age or Need: Public Policies for Older People. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publi-
cations, Inc.
O’Rand, A. M. (1996). The Precious and the Precocious: Understanding Cumulative Disadvantage
and Cumulative Advantage over the Life Course. The Gerontologist. 36(2), 230–238.
O’Rand, A. M. & Hamil-Luker, J. (2005). Processes of Cumulative Adversity: Childhood Disadvan-
tage and Increased Risk of Heart Attack across the Life Course. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
60 (Special_Issue_2), 117–124.
Oliver, M. & Shapiro, T. (2006). Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality.
Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
Parker, P. D., Jerrim, J., Schoon, I., & Marsh, H. W. (2016). A Multination Study of Socioeconomic
Inequality in Expectations for Progression to Higher Education: The Role of Between-School
Tracking and Ability Stratifcation. American Educational Research Journal. 53(1), 6–32.
13
Payne, K. (2017). The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Afects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. New York:
Penguin.
Phelan, J. C., Link, B. L., & Tehranifar, P. (2010). Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health
Inequalities: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 51
Suppl, S28–S40.
Piketty, T., Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2016). Economic Growth in the United States: A Tale of Two Countries.
Washington, DC: Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Powell, L. M., Slater, S., Chaloupka, F. J., & Harper, D. (2006). Availability of Physical Activity–
Related Facilities and Neighborhood Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics: A National
Study. American Journal of Public Health. 96(9), 1676–1680.
Prus, S. G. (2000). Income Inequality as a Canadian Cohort Ages: An Analysis of the Later Life
Course. Research on Aging. 22(3), 11–37.
Rigney, D. (2010). The Matthew Efect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. New York: Columbia.
Riley, M. W. (1980). Social Stratifcation and Aging. Paper Presented at the Wilson Day Proceeding. Roches-
ter, NY: University of Rochester.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (1978). The Structure of Opportunity in School. Social Forces. 57(1), 236–256.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (1989). Organizational Career Systems and Employee Misperceptions. In M. Arthur,
D. T. Hall & B. Lawrence, eds., Handbook of Career Theory (pp. 329–353). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Rowe, J. W. & Kahn, R. L. (1987). Human Aging: Usual and Successful. Science. 237(4811), 143–149.
Rowe, J. W. & Kahn, R. L. (1997). Successful Aging. The Gerontologist. 37(4), 433–440.
Sampson, R. J., Morenof, J. D., & Gannon-Rowley, T. (2002). Assessing ‘Neighborhood Efects’: So-
cial Processes and New Directions in Research. Annual Review of Sociology. 28(1), 443–478.
Seiyama, K. (2009). Why is the Income Inequality among Japanese Elderly so Largely? In J. R. Navarro &
E. R. Vázquez, eds. Envejecimiento de la población en España y Japón (pp. 30–61). Salamanca: Edi-
ciones Universidad.
Shapiro, T. (2017). Toxic inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Di-
vide, and Threatens Our Future. New York: Basic Books.
Shura, R., Siders, R. A., & Dannefer, D. (2011). Culture Change in Long-term Care: Participatory
Action Research and the Role of the Resident. The Gerontologist. 51(2), 212–225.
Stone, M. E., Lin, J., Dannefer, D., & Kelley-Moore, J. A. (2017). The Continued Eclipse of Heteroge-
neity in Gerontological Research. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. 72(1), 162–167.
Therborn, G. (2012). The Killing Fields of Inequality. International Journal of Health Services. 42(4),
579–589.
Thomése, F., Bufel, T., & Phillipson, C. (2018). Neighbourhood Change, Social Inequalities and
Age-Friendly Communities. In T. Bufel, H. Sophie & C. Phillipson, eds., Age-Friendly Cities and
Communities—a Global Perspective (pp. 33–45). Bristol: Policy Press.
Treas, J. (1985). Unpublished analysis of CPS data.
Umberson, D. & Montez, J. K. (2010). Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy.
Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51(1_Suppl), 54–66.
Veenstra, G. (2000). Social Capital, SES and Health: An Individual-Level Analysis. Social Science &
Medicine. 50(5), 619–629.
Zimmer, L. (1988). Tokenism and Women in the Workplace: The Limits of Gender-Neutral Theory.
Social Problems. 35(1), 64–77.
14
2
Poverty and economic
insecurity in the life course
Leen Vandecasteele, Dario Spini,
Nicolas Sommet, and Felix Bühlmann
Poverty and the life course
Why study poverty from a life course perspective?

It is often argued that the occurrence of economic hardship should be studied from a life
course perspective. Just like many other social problems, poverty typically presents itself as a
risk in the life course of individuals. As a result, most welfare states develop social policies to
protect their citizens from social risks or the poverty consequences of those (Baldwin, 1990;
Cusack, Iversen & Rehm, 2006; Leisering & Leibfried, 1999). Similarly, policy interventions
and social assistance schemes aim at helping families and individuals escape from poverty.
Thus, insight into the individual transitions into and out of poverty can help improve social
policy.
In this chapter, we consider poverty as a relative concept, which means that it links to
the standard of living and other aspects of social inequality in a given society. We use the
poverty definition employed by the European Union that was first agreed by the European
Council in 1985 and expanded over time to include the aspects of social exclusion and also
life course aspects. According to this definition, people are said to be living in poverty if
their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard
of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live (European Commission,
2004). Importantly, poverty is considered as a multidimensional aspect, which in a life course
perspective means that disadvantage may be accumulated over time leading to social exclu-
sion. Poverty is typically measured at the household level, assuming that household members
pool resources. This shows the importance of linked lives and dependencies especially in the
increased poverty risk after separation of households. Again, according to the definition we
use, it is expected that the poor may experience multiple disadvantage through unemploy-
ment, low income, poor housing, inadequate health care and barriers to lifelong learning,
culture, sport and recreation. They are often excluded and marginalised from participating in
activities – economic, social and cultural – that are the norm for other people and their access
to fundamental rights may be restricted (European Commission, 2004). Apart from defining
DOI: 10.4324/9780429470059-3 15
Leen Vandecasteele et al.
poverty in relation to social inequality and the life course, the European Union’s statistical
ofce Eurostat also measures poverty in a multidimensional and longitudinal fashion. The at-
risk-of-poverty or social exclusion indicator takes into account several dimensions: income
poverty, material deprivation and low work intensity. The persistent at-risk-of poverty rate
examines poverty duration by showing the proportion of people who were below the pov-
erty threshold and had also been below the threshold for at least two of the three preceding
years (Eurostat, 2018).
The duration of poverty is an important element when we are interested in assessing how
severely the population is afected by economic risk. First, duration and recurrence of pov-
erty can tell us something about the impact poverty is likely to have on a person’s life. If the
period of economic hardship is a one-time event and relatively short in duration, then this
period can often be bridged by relying on the family’s resources such as savings, debt or fam-
ily support – or by delaying purchases. However, people’s resources tend to become depleted
after a while and the longer or more frequently a family needs to live from an income under
the poverty line, the more severe is its impact on their living standard. Furthermore, poverty
durations and mobility patterns also shed a clearer light on the distribution of economic risk
in society. It could be argued that following Rawls’ principle of distributional justice, short
poverty durations for a larger share of the population are to be preferred over longer poverty
durations for a smaller share of the population (Rawls, 1971). If mobility into and out of
poverty is high and poverty spells are nonrecurrent, then the experience of poverty is wide-
spread in society. This implies that a relatively large share of the population has experienced
a – short – poverty episode at some point in their lives. Yet, poverty mobility may be high but
if people typically experience repeated poverty episodes then poverty is more concentrated
in a small vulnerable group. The same is true if poverty mobility is limited and poverty spells
are on average longer. The latter scenario is often seen as the most problematic from the point
of view of policy makers, as the level of vulnerability, disadvantage and inequality is larger,
but also because long-term poverty and recurring poverty have more detrimental outcomes
than short-term poverty, for instance in terms of child development and educational achieve-
ment. However, a high cross-sectional poverty rate is often seen as less problematic if poverty
durations are short.
Historical overview of the life course approach in poverty research

In poverty research, the focus on dynamic and life course aspects was frst acknowledged by
Seebohm Rowntree (1902). In his poverty research around the turn of the 19th century in
the English town York, he found that the life of working-class individuals was characterised
by a life cycle of needs and resources. A typical working-class life was characterised by fve
periods, with difering degrees of hardship. The periods of particular hardship were child-
hood, early middle life with childrearing and old age. Rowntree was also clearly aware that
these dynamics into and out of poverty had an efect on the interpretation of poverty rates at
a single point in time. He stated that
The proportion of the community who at one period or other of their lives sufer from
poverty to the point of physical privation is therefore much greater, and the injurious
efects of such a condition are much more widespread than would appear from a con-
sideration of the number who can be shown to be below the poverty line at any given
moment.
(Rowntree, 1902, pp. 169–172)
16
Poverty and economic insecurity
Despite these early observations of the relevance of the life course, it is surprising that for
much of the 20th century, many poverty researchers paid little attention to the temporal
aspects of poverty experiences. Poverty was generally seen as a permanent condition and
most researchers believed it to be caused by static factors such as the social background or
neighbourhood of residence (Wilson, 1987) or a “culture of poverty” acquired by growing
up in a poor milieu (Lewis, 1966). At the same time, poverty was often assumed to lead to
downward careers into long-term poverty or the intergenerational transmission of poverty
(Leisering & Walker, 1998). Only with the availability of mature socio-economic household
panel data and the advancement of longitudinal research techniques in the 1980s has a major
upsurge in the attention for poverty mobility over the life course seen daylight.
When examining economic hardship from a life course perspective, several questions are
usually addressed, such as: how much mobility is there into and out of economic hardship?
What are the specifc life phases and life events associated with economic hardship? Which
distinct kinds of poverty trajectories exist? Dewilde (2003) provides an overview of life
course theories and how they link to social exclusion and poverty. For an overview of previ-
ous studies and approaches to study poverty and employment from a life course perspective,
see Vandecasteele and Giesselmann (2018).
In one of the frst panel data studies on poverty, Bane and Ellwood were for the frst time
taking periods or spells of poverty as the unit of analysis (Bane & Ellwood, 1986). They
showed that most of the people who fall poor in the USA have a short poverty spell. How-
ever, it’s also the case that the majority of people found poor at any given time experience a
long poverty spell before they escape poverty. Hence, they argued that cross-sectional sur-
veys tend to overestimate the importance of long-term poverty. Also in Europe, most pov-
erty spells are short, but a substantial share of the people experiencing poverty goes through
repeated spells (Fouarge & Layte, 2003; OECD, 2001).
Poverty duration, life events and poverty risk: empirical evidence

When assessing the severity of economic risk in the population, we may look at several indi-
cators, such as the cross-sectional poverty head count (what share of the population is poor),
the poverty gap (a measure of poverty intensity or poverty severity) and the typical poverty
duration. In the European Union, the persistent at-risk-of poverty rate is used by Eurostat
and shows the proportion of people below the poverty threshold who also had been below
the threshold for at least two of the three preceding years (Eurostat, 2018).
Besides the recurrence and persistence of poverty spells, another important element is
formed by the typical life course events associated with poverty entry or exit. Life-course
events such as divorce, the birth of a child or the loss of a job can infuence the chances of
poverty entry (Fouarge & Layte, 2005; Giesselmann & Goebel, 2013; Kohler et al., 2012;
Vandecasteele, 2011, 2012, 2015; Whelan, Layte, & Maitre, 2003). They thereby can form
turning points or critical points in the life course. Especially employment situation changes,
for example, becoming unemployed, retirement, and household composition changes, for
example, divorce, birth of a child, are important factors preceding poverty, also called pov-
erty triggers (DiPrete & McManus, 2000). Other important life events occur when a child
starts his/her own household and when new persons enter the household, for example, a new
partner (Fouarge & Layte, 2005; Jenkins, 1999). Risk periods for poverty are, among oth-
ers, young adulthood, retirement, unemployment, lone parenthood and periods of sickness
(Alcock, 1997; Barnes, Heady, & Middleton, 2002; Biewen, 2003; Finnie, 2000; Fouarge &
Layte, 2003; Leisering & Leibfried, 1999; OECD, 2001; Whelan et al., 2003).
17
Leen Vandecasteele et al.
The interplay between the experience of life events and a family’s underlying socio-
economic characteristics may lead to cumulative disadvantage. First, the experience of certain
risky life events or risk factors may be more common to already disadvantaged groups (Brady,
Finnigan, & Huebgen, 2017). Furthermore, some life events more strongly affect the associated
poverty risk of people with a disadvantaged socio-demographic profile, such as a low educa-
tion level, a lower social class or being female (Vandecasteele, 2010, 2011). For instance, while
childbirth isn’t a particular poverty trigger for most socio-demographic groups, people from
lower social classes and lower educational levels see their poverty risk increase when a child is
born in the family (Vandecasteele, 2011). Also the poverty penalty associated with divorce is
particularly gendered, with women seeing substantial rises in their poverty risk and persistent
poverty risk, when the sharing of resources of the male partner is reduced (Andress et al., 2006;
Vandecasteele, 2010, 2011).
Mechanisms influencing poverty duration and recurrence
Cumulative advantage/disadvantage
Cumulative (dis)advantage processes (CAD) have been proposed in life course theory as a
way to take into account a temporal perspective in stratification and inequality research. Pov-
erty is not only related to the status origins, but rather develops over time, which creates both
heterogeneity and divergence in life trajectories. Hence, it is thought that life trajectories
have a structure that can be understood through the idea of accumulation which is defined by
Dannefer (2003) as “the systematic tendency for interindividual divergence in a given char-
acteristic (e.g. money health, or status) with the passage of time” (p. 327). The author insists
on the fact that the source of accumulation resides in the interaction of a complex of forces
(mainly structural) and that it is primarily a property of collectives, (notably cohorts) rather
than individuals. This does not mean that all mechanisms are social. Psychosocial factors
(like stereotype threats, personality traits, self and identity regulations) may also play a mod-
erating role in these processes (Elder, 1969; Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008) and micro-,
meso- and macro-level effects have to be considered (Dannefer, 2018). A very interesting
development of the CAD model is the cumulative inequality theory (CIT) by Ferraro and
Shippee (2009), who maintain that “social systems generate inequality which is manifested
over the life course via demographic and developmental processes, and that personal trajec-
tories are shaped by the accumulation of risks, available resources, perceived trajectories, and
human agency” (p. 1056).
There is no systematic theory yet which explains the main mechanisms influencing ac-
cumulation processes across the life course, in order to make sense of the complexity of the
mechanisms that can influence the divergence in resources within a collective across time.
Different hypotheses exist so far which include critical period (notably childhood) effects (for
epidemiological models, see Ben-Shlomo & Kuh, 2002), path-dependency models, reserve
accumulation (Cullati, Kliegel, & Widmer, 2018) and non-cumulative inequality models
like “the winner takes it all” (see DiPrete & Eirich, 2006). The CAD hypothesis has not
been consistently verified in empirical assessments of increasing divergence across individuals
through time on all types of indicators (see for example Cullati et al., 2018). Some studies
confirm that heterogeneity in poverty increases for instance in adult life (Shuey & Willson,
2014) and older ages (Dannefer, 2018), but the evidence in early adulthood is less systematic.
There is also evidence that the heterogeneity of professional trajectories is higher for women
than for men (Levy & Widmer, 2013) with an increase of risks of vulnerability for mothers,
18
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
berakodásnál, a hangját se lehetett hallani többé, hiszen Raschné
már eltávozott a partról. Lars Manuelsen egyik csoporttól a másikhoz
járkált, mindenkinek a fiáról és a S e g e l f o s s i U j s á g cikkéről
beszélt, bizony, igaz annak minden szava, az emberek véssék jól
emlékezetükbe, kicsoda Lassen tiszteletes és kik a szülei.
Megérkezett az ifjú Willatz, meséli Julius, már üdvözöltem is. –
Igen, az ifjú Willatz van itt, mondják az emberek. Hasonlít az apjára,
ő se visel szakállt. De az alakja mintha magasabb lenne. – Akkora
lehet, mint én, mondja rá Julius. – Ó, Lassen kövérebb, mint
akármelyiktek is, mondja Lars Manuelsen, egyik se ér fel vele! Lars
Manuelsen tovább bolyongott egyik csoporttól a másikig és mind az
járt a fejében: hogy Willatz a földbirtokos, ma este megérkezett, de
sok kereskedelmi utazónak volt több pénz a zsebében, mint neki.
Lelkemre mondom, hogy így van. Egy muzsikus, olyan, mint egy
kóbor komédiás. Bezzeg Lassen! Itt járt, ezen a helyen és itt játszott,
mikor még kis gyermek volt. Az emberek Larsnak hívták és ezeket
az utakat rótta a lába, a szeme pedig itt nyugodott ezeken a
szakadékokon és sziklákon. A szülőháza még most is fönnáll, öreg
apja és anyja laknak benne. Milyen szép volt mindezt végiggondolni
– Lassennel kapcsolatban.
A postahajó fölszedte a horgonyt és elindult. Késő éjszakára vált
az idő. A rakodóparton ott áll még vagy tíz láda, valamennyit a boltos
Pernek címezték, de Theodor nem mutatkozott sehol, nyilván azért,
mert csak tíz ládáról volt szó, nem pedig legalább is százról. Julius
találkozott Kornelius boltiszolgával és azt mondta neki: Itt vannak a
fésük, érkezett vagy tíz láda. – Ökör! mondta Kornelius dühösen.
De késő éjszaka Holmengraa úr mégis kijött a szobájából.
Ugylátszik, vágya támadt a szabad levegő után, csakúgy, mint más
embernek és este, mikor mindenki a kikötőben szorongott és
elhagyottak voltak az utak, Holmengraa úr is elősétált valahonnan.
Isten tudja, honnan jött, lassú léptekkel bandukolt hazafelé…
7.
Nagyszerű idők jártak akkoriban, szépen és jól köszöntött be a

tavasz, zöldeltek a mezők és a szántóföldek, a viharok, esők és a
forróság, – minden a maga idejében következett be. Pompázó és
gazdag termékenységben állt minden az urasági épület körül: a
hatalmas segelfossi fensíkok, az öreg fák és az erdő. Az
embereknek semmi kivánnivalójuk se maradt.
Az ifjú Willatz nem hozott magával társaságot, de ő már
egymagában is társaságnak számított és ezért a birtok elevensége
csodálatosan nőtt, mióta a tulajdonosa hazaérkezett. Itt volt
mindenekelőtt az evés problémája. Vajjon mit adjanak be az
asztalra? Segelfoss mindig hemzsegett a nagy személyzettől és ez a
személyzet most se volt éppen csekély, bőségesen volt ennivaló,
tartalékágy és több hatalmas vendégszoba, ahol kényelmes
tartózkodás esett, de ez a sok bolond ember most is csak azon törte
a fejét, mit akarhat vajjon enni és inni Holmsen úr. Az pedig azt ette
és itta, ami éppen elébe került, soha egy szót se pazarolt az
ilyesmire és nem voltak semmiféle különös kivánságai. Nem olyan
időket élünk, hogy dőzsölhetnénk, mondta. Gyermekkorában volt
egy hátaslova az istállóban és a kis Gottfred, a mostani
segédtávirász, gondoskodott róla, hogy a ló rendes legyen és tiszta.
Most azonban nem volt hátaslova és nem is kivánkozott utána.
Egyszer csak felnő az ember, mondta. Mikor Martin béres
meghallotta, hogy nem tudnak elég változatos étrendet összállítani
Holmsen úrnak, maga ajánlkozott, hogy a tilalmi idő létére kimegy
vad szárnyasok után az erdőre, Holmsen úr azonban a fogát
csikorgatta és a válaszával rögtön elnémította Martin bérest: Menj
csak és lődözd a madarakat! mondta neki. Én meg majd nyomban
följelentelek, érted?
Segelfoss ura tehát nem ismert tréfát. De az se baj! Alig
melegedett még meg itthon, máris mindenki a szívébe zárta.
Alapjában mindenkit szőrmentén kezelt és nem ütötte bele
mindenbe az orrát, de ha aztán szükség volt rá, ugyancsak a
sarkára tudott állni. És micsoda ereje volt ennek a fiatalembernek!
Az aratóknak elállt szemük-szájuk, mikor egyszer valami óriási
köszörűkővel kínlódtak, az ifjú Willatz pedig váratlanul a
segítségükre sietett. Ó, nagyon köszönöm, mondta Martin béres és
megrőkönyödött egy kicsit. Nézte a földesúr kezét, – milyen biztos a
fogása és milyen vasökle van!
Az ifjú Willatz átment Holmengraa úrékhoz és ott nagyon
szívélyesen fogadták. Holmengraa urat már évek hosszú sora óta
nem látta, azért meg is ütközött egy kicsit, amint a szemébe ötlöttek
a közelgő öregség jelei a malomtulajdonos alakján. Bizony, azok a
szemek elfénytelenedtek már egy kissé, és a fej valahogy
előrekókkadt. Őszinte öröm látszott az öreg úron, jóságos, egyszerű
arca földerült és a lesgzeretetreméltóbb módon üdvözölte az ifjú
Willatzot. Boldog volt-e most? Leültette egy jó székbe a vendégét,
aztán csöngetett. Csakugyan boldog volt. Lám, ez a a fiatalember
elsőnek őt látogatta meg, hozzá jött el először a híres művész, az
ujságok kedvence, az ifjú Willatz, Holmsen hadnagy fia, – hozzá,
nem pedig Rasch ügyvédhez, vagy Landmarck lelkészhez, igenis ő
hozzá, a királyhoz jött el legelőbb, amint azt el is várta tőle.
A zongoráját engedelmével a raktáramba helyeztem el, amíg
megérkezik, mondta.
Köszönöm, nagyon jól volt így, felelte Willatz.
Most aztán mondja meg, hol akarja felállítani, én kirendelem vagy
félszáz emberemet, azok majd óvatosan odaszállítják. A
téglaégetőbe kerüljön, úgye?
Hálásan köszönöm, felelte Willatz. Minden megváltozott ezen a
vidéken, csak az ön szeretetreméltósága marad mindig a régi,
mondta. És az ifjú Willatznak eszébe se jutott, hogy Holmengraa úr
csak kérkedett azzal a félszáz emberrel, nem is volt már ötven
munkása.
Most Irgensné jött be a szobába és Holmengraa úr fel akarta
frissíteni a vendége emlékezetét Irgensné irányában, erre azonban
nem került sor. A fiatalembernek már a köszönésén is megérzett a
nagyrabecsülés és a régi ismeretség emléke, Irgensné pedig örült,
hogy fölvette a gránátékszereit. Bort és kalácsot hozott, egy kis
kóstolót abból a híres kalácsból, amely szinte elolvad az ember
nyelvén.
Szívesen fogadtam volna önt már kinn a kikötőben és
Marianenak is az volt a szándéka, hogy kijön, még őrszemet is
állítottunk, csakhogy későn futott be a jelentéssel.
Ez több is lett volna, mint amennyit megérdemlek.
Nem, dehogy is lett volna több, mondta Holmengraa úr
nagykomolyan.
És most itthon van Mariane kisasszony?
Nincs fönn a szobájában, Irgensné? kérdezte Holmengraa úr.
Azonnal megnézem.
Azért ne zavarja Mariane kisasszonyt, kiáltott Irgensné után az
ifjú Willatz. Egyébként nem vagyunk teljesen idegenek egymásnak,
az utóbbi években többször volt szerencsém találkozni a
kisasszonnyal.
Igen, Mariane meg is írta. Maga volt olyan szíves és elvitte
néhányszor színházba meg hangversenyre.
Hát Félix kint van még Mexikóban?
Igen, kint van és kinn is marad. Tengerész lett belőle és már
többször érintette az európai partokat, egyszer már Kielben is járt.
De haza akkor se jött. Most már önállóan vezet egy hajót.
Ez már teszi! Én ugyan nem értek hozzá, de képzelem, hogy ez
már nagy eredmény, úgy-e? Az ő korában, úgy értem.
Igen, határozottan csinos eredmény.
Mi, többiek, nem visszük semmire, mondta ifjú Willatz.
No, ugyan, hiszen magából híres ember lett azóta, felelte
Holmnegraa úr, mindennap írnak magáról az ujságok.
Nem ér az semmit. Múlnak az évek és én még nem alkottam
semmi maradandót. Igaz is, Holmengraa úr, ugye, mi már mindent
kiegyenlítettünk? Azt hiszem, nincsen több követelése rajtam.
Nem, nincsen több követelésem, sajnos, felelte Holmengraa úr
és mosolygott.
Nem sajnos, – hála Istennek! mondta az ifjú Willatz és ő is
mosolygott.
Egyébként nem lett volna szükséges, hogy teljesen kiegyenlítse
az adósságát, jegyzi meg erre Holmengraa úr és olyan, mint a
megtestesült jóindulat. Isten tudja, nem a bor szédíti-e meg a fejét.
Mert hozzáteszi: Legalább is várhatott volna, amíg pénzzavarba
jutok.
Az ifjú Willatz pedig azt feleli rá:
Akkor alighanem sokáig kellett volna várnom. Nem, jobb úgy,
hogy szépen elrendeztünk mindent. De most másról van szó,
Holmengraa úr. Nézze csak, én nem értek az erdőgazdálkodáshoz.
Szabad most nekem fákat kivágatni?
Holmengraa úr gondolkozik a dolgon, aztán szakszerűen
válaszol:
Azt hiszem, megteheti, legalább is bizonyos határig. Elvégre az
apjaura ideje óta teljesen érintetlen az erdő.
Mert nagyon jól esnék, ha most lehetne.
Ha akarja, elmegyek az erdőbe és megnézem, lehetne-e vágatni
valamit már az ősszel.
Most, azonnal nem tehetném meg?
Most? Nem. Csak ősszel vagy télen.
Úgy? kérdezi az ifjú Willatz. Ez bizony keresztezi a
számításomat. Hiszen könnyen megeshet, hogy nem is maradok itt
őszig vagy télig.
Az nem számít a gazdaság szempontjából. A fák csak itt vannak,
kidöntik őket, eladják, a pénzt pedig felveszik értük. Ami pedig az
utolsó pontot illeti, már mint a pénzkérdést, – az csekélység, – de a
pénzt meg lehet kapni, amint akarja az ember. Ez már így van a
fakereskedésben. Akármelyik erdőtulajdonos jön hozzám ilyen
kivánsággal, annyi pénzt adok neki, amennyire szüksége van.
Hiszen a faüzletben biztos minden kötés.
Az ifjú Willatz Holmengraa úrra nézett és megérezte annak finom
tapintatosságát. Holmengraa úr pedig hozzátette:
Fára különben mindenütt lehet pénzt kapni, ahol akar az ember,
például az itteni bankban is. Alapítottam egy kis bankot itt
Segelfossban és Rasch ügyvédet tettem meg direktornak, ott még
van elég készpénz. Csak arra mondom ezeket, hogy ön azt hiszi:
személyesen itt kell lennie, mikor a fát kivágják. De csak nem akar
bennünket ismét elhagyni az ősszel, Willatz?
Még nem tudom. De okvetlenül el kell majd utaznom. Dolgozom
valamin és nem tudom még, hogy be tudom-e itt fejezni. Az is
meglehet, hogy sohase fejezem be!
Nem haragszik, hogy csak úgy egyszerűen Willatznak szólítom?
Sőt ellenkezőleg, – hálás vagyok érte.
Ismertem az édesapját, meg az édesanyját és magát is
ismertem, amikor még egészen kicsi volt és Angliából tért haza.
Akkor kaptam öntől egy hátaslovat.
Tőlem? Igaz, csakugyan, egy kis barna kancát. Még arra is
emlékszik? Ó, azóta mi minden történt már velem! Szóval egyelőre
itthon akar dolgozni? Ne kerüljön el akkor bennünket. Nálunk nem
olyan előkelő, mint odaát a kastélyban, de nagyon fogunk örülni,
ahányszor látjuk.
Az urak összekoccintották a poharukat és ittak. Holmengraa úr
kétségkívül meghatódott. Az öreg már olyan régóta fojtja magába a
szót, hogy most vágyat érzett: kiönteni, ami a lelkét nyomja.
Választékosan szívélyes volt, egy kicsit kérkedett ugyan azzal a
félszáz munkással meg a bankjával, a saját alapításával, de később
annál szerényebb lett és nem dicsekedett tovább. Szegény király, ott
ült a finom ruháiban, egy szegény ember, aki kilépett a meséből és
most megtörték az idők és meghajlott a kemény dereka, és az ifjú
Willatznak a nagy bevonulásra kellett gondolnia, a diadalmenetre
évekkel ezelőtt, amikor Holmengraa urat felhő vette körül, a csodálat
és elismerés mesebeli felhője! Mi minden történt már azóta!
Tulajdonképen semmi különös, sem ő, sem más nem tapasztalhatott
éppen hanyatlást vagy szerencsétlenséget, csak éppen – vége volt a
mesének…
Ma reggel egy ember keresett föl és pénzt akart hozni nekem,
mondta az ifjú Willatz. Jensennek hívják, Theodor Jensennek, vagy
boltos Theodornak, abból is felnőtt férfi lett azóta. Korán reggel volt
még, mikor fölkeresett.
Holmengraa úr fölfigyelt.
Azt mondja, halat szárított az én szikláimon és most meg akarja
fizetni a bért, merthogy hat évi bérrel tartozik már nekem.
Úgy. No lám, a kis Theodor nem is olyan ostoba, mondta rá
Holmengraa úr.
Megkérdeztem tőle, hogy annyira elhasználta-e a szikláimat,
hogy lyukakat koptatott beléjük? Nem, azt mondja, azt nem tette. No
hát akkor nincs is mit elszámolni, mondom.
Hát persze, helyesli Holmengraa úr, de általában szokás
helypénzt fizetni, s így joggal gondolhatott erre Theodor.
Aztán valami földet is akar vásárolni tőlem. Azt mondta, nincs
egy talpalattnyi tulajdon földje sem. A bolt és a pékség az ön telkén
épült, egy áruraktárt pedig az én területemen állított fel az apja,
szóval, hogy neki semmi saját telke nincsen és hogy nem
vásárolhatna-e éntőlem. Majd gondolkozom a dologról, mondtam
neki. Csakhogy látja, Holmengraa úr, én a földemből már nem
szeretnék eladni semmit.
Majd megmondom Theodornak, hogy ne zaklassa ilyesmivel.
Ó, zaklatásról szó sincs, nagyon jóravaló, rendes embernek
látszik ez a Theodor. Elmondta, hogy az ügyvéd konkurrens üzletet
akar nyitni s hogy abból nem lesz semmi jó, egyikük se keres majd
eleget. Most egy darab földet meg rakodópartot szeretne vásárolni,
hogy elvágja az útját a konkurrenciának.
Holmengraa úr fölényesen mosolygott:
Ez meghaladja az erejét, mondta. A jó Theodornak kicsit
zabolátlan a fantáziája. De felfogása annál helyesebb. Ketten itt
csakugyan nem tudnának megélni.
És ekkor – Mariane jött be a szobába. Az urak mindketten
fölálltak és az ifjú Willatz elébement a lánynak. Szinte úgy látszott,
mintha most nyomban valami rendkívüli dolognak kellene történni,
de semmi sem történt. A fiatalok már jól ismerték egymást,
tegeződtek, mint valamikor gyerekkorukban és nyugodtan,
barátságosan társalogtak. A sötétarcú lány karcsú volt és fehér ruhát
vett föl, és Willatz meg is jegyezte, hogy olyan, mint egy szegfű
ezüstös üvegben. Ezen mind a ketten szívből nevettek.
Egy ezüst pálinkás üvegben, toldotta meg Mariane. Aztán
megkérdezte: Egyedül jöttél? Nem hoztál magaddal nagy
társaságot?
Hidd el, én egymagamban is egész hadsereg vagyok. De Anton
Coldevin utánam jön később.
Vettünk egy ökröt, amit nektek kell megennetek, mondta
Marianne.
Holmengraa úr, a lánya mindig rabszolgamunkára fog.
Rendszerint a zongoránál kell neki dolgoznom.
Holmengraa úr csak nevetett ezen a két gyereken.
Mariane apró házi eseményekről referált: Tudod kérlek, itt
minden nagyszerűen megy, legutóbb is tíz csibe kelt ki a kotlós alól
és csak egy tojás lett rossz. Minél többet beszélt, annál többször
zökkent bele a segelfossi dialektusba és általában nem nagyon
válogatta meg a kifejezéseit. Vajjon hanyagság volt ez, vagy
ravaszság? Az apjának azt jelentette: Éppen most adtam magot a
tyúkoknak, pedig már tegnap kellett volna kapniok. Aztán egyenesen
Willatzhoz fordult és megkérdezte: Nem akarsz egy kis gyümölcsöt?
Ó, egészen jól érzem én magam gyümölcs nélkül is.
Azért ehetsz egy kis gyümölcsöt. Akkor legalább Irgensné
behozhatja az ezüst tálat, az mindig nagy pillanat neki. Papa,
Irgensné már megint siránkozott a kulcs miatt. Tudnod kell, Willatz,
hogy Irgensné elveszített egy icipici éléstárkulcsot és most halálra
bánkódik miatta.
Mariane kisasszony csengetett a gyümölcsért.
Úgy hallom, színházat is kapunk ide, mondta Willatz. A fiatal
Theodor említette, hogy színházat épít. És mentegetőzött, hogy azt
is az én telkemen építi.
No lám, a Theodor, mondta. Az igaz, hogy a csónakházat valami
mulatóhelyfélének bővíti ki. A ház az ön telkén van.
Hisz ebből a Theodorból valóságos férfi lett. Emlékszem rá, kicsi
korában milyen semmiség volt.
Elég szorgalmas ember és, úgylátszik, szerencséje van abban,
amihez hozzákezd, mondta Holmengraa úr.
Erről jut szembe: csakugyan miért ne vehetne telket és
rakodópartot, hogy kizárhassa a konkurrenciát? Hiszen a telek itt
nem drága.
Dehogyis nem. Attól függ, mennyit kér ön érte. De bizony drága
telek az, értékes telek. A segelfossi földek most sokkal többet érnek,
mint azelőtt.
Ezt önnek köszönhetem, Holmengraa úr. Azért mégsem adok el
földet.
Behozták a gyümölcsöt, szőllőt meg almát ezüst tálon.
Mariane huncutkodni kezdett.
Irgensné, a papa azt mondja, sose mérgelődjék amiatt a kulcs
miatt.
Nem is, válaszolta Irgensné kitérően.
Hát persze, hogy nem, elvégre is csak egy kulcsról van szó.
Ezzel azonban már be is telt a mérték és Irgensné ingerülten
adta vissza a szót:
Holmengraa úr mindig azt mondja, hogy ne nyugtalankodjam a
kulcs miatt, pedig elég fájdalmas ügy az nékem. És még csak el se
tudom gondolni, hogy mi lett vele.
De a többiek csak nevettek s végül Irgensnének is muszáj volt
elmosolyodni, Holmengraa úr azzal vigasztalta, hogy hiszen úgyse
akad tolvaj Segelfossban.
Ezzel csak ne tessék tréfálni! intette az asszony. Ön különben is
túlságosan jóhiszemű, Holmengraa úr. A cselédszobában néhány
embert nem szenvedhetek. Szívesen útnak ereszteném őket.
Kik azok?
Mindenekelőtt Konrad.
Holmengraa úrnak kellemetlen volt ez a beszéd. Konrad
napszámos utálatos fickó volt, ha őt elbocsátják, a malommunkások
okvetlenül közösséget vállalnak vele és sztrájkba lépnek.
De hiszen egy idő óta nincs is már vele semmi baj, mondta
Holmengraa úr.
Az ám, csakhogy úgylátszik, mintha megint újra akarná kezdeni.
Holmengraa úr vidámságot erőltetett az arcára, de azért nyilván
nyugtalankodott. Egy darabig gondolkozott, aztán bocsánatot kért,
egy pillanatra, hogy neki valami beszélni valója van Irgensnével.
A fiatalok egyedül maradtak.
Ifjú Willatz szólni akart valamit, azt hitte, úgy folytathatják, ahogy
kezdték, közömbös fecsegéssel. De ebben csalódott. Mariane
minden átmenet nélkül megkérdezte s egészen belesápadt az arca:
Miért nem hallottam rólad azóta? Rossz embernek tartsalak?
Willatz várt valami ilyesmit, de mégse készült fel a helyes
válaszra, meglepetten nézett szembe a lánnyal.
Csak nyugalom! mondta és felkelt. Csak megfogadtam az utolsó
szavadat.
Milyen szavamat? Hogy nem akartam?
Igen, hogy nem akartál.
Úgy, mondta a lány. De te magad voltál az oka, hogy azt
mondtam… te kínoztál.
És te voltál az oka annak, hogy kínoztalak. Te játszottál velem.
Hazudsz, sziszegett a lány és indián arca eltorzult dühében.
Willatz elmosolyodott és megjegyezte:
Nehéz egy érzést színlelni. Hiszen nem is vagy te dühös.
Mariane összeszedte magát. Ó, az érzése nagyon is igazi volt,
de a fiatalember szava letompította.
Igenis, hogy dühös vagyok, mondta. Rémesen dühös. Ezt nem
érdemeltem meg tőled. Hát olyan nagy baj az, hogy akkor azt
mondtam? Hallgass csak! Már azt se tudom, hogy hívták azt az
embert. Te még tudod? Mifél ember volt?
A legutolsót gondolod?
Úgy, tehát több is van? No most már igazán hagyd abba, kérlek.
Rémes alak vagy. Én sohase játszottam veled. Soha. És különben
neked sincs sok beszélnivalód.
Az meglehet, felelte a fiú.
Az ifjú Willatz ezt bizonyosan nem gondolta komolyan. Nyilván
érezte, hogy fölényben van és megsértődött. Valami rossz angolság
ragadt rá, a lány pedig heves volt és kíméletlen.
Te igazán még féltékenyebb vagy, mint egy lány, mondta
Mariane. Tűkön ülök, ahányszor együtt vagyok veled. Nos, ki volt az
a nagy legény, ki vele!
Ifjú Willatz vállat vont. Érezte, hogy megbántotta a lányt. Azelőtt
nem tapasztalt benne ennyi komolyságot, most egyszerre jóvá
akarta tenni a hevességét, mert megint leült és azt mondta:
Érdemes beszélni róla?
Beszélni róla? Mondd meg, hogy mit tettem én?
Hogy mit tettél? Nos, ne túlozzunk! Sok mindent teszel te. Egész
sereg férfit gyűjtesz magad köré, pusztán azzal, hogy beszélsz velük
és rájuk nézel. Hát mit akarsz még, mit lássak? Még valami
meghatározott dolgon is rajta kapjalak talán?
Hát én csak beszélgetek, míg nézelődöm. Hát mit tehetek én
arról?
Persze, hogy tehetnél róla egy kicsit, mondta a fiú sokkal
szelídebben. Úgyis tudod, hogy ilyen mindenható vagy, hát nem
kellene mindúntalan megismételned a csudáidat.
Majd igyekszem abbahagyni, adta vissza a lány a szót és
bűnbánóan mosolygott.
Mert ezzel annyit elrontasz nekem!
Igyekszem abbahagyni, Willatz.
Tedd meg, kérlek! mondta a fiú.
Nem volt ez egyéb, csak szerelmesek civódása, együgyü édes
egyenetlenség, most is jól végződött, mint mindig. Bizonyosan
hozzászoktak már az ilyen pörpatvarhoz és nem esett nehezükre a
kibékülés. Végül kijelentette Mariane, hogy ő maga is féltékeny.
Bizony, mondta, mikor annyi női szem előtt játszol és mindenki csak
téged néz, mindenki csak téged akar, akkor igazán féltékeny vagyok.
Igen, én láttam ezt a tulajdon szememmel. Hát akkor csak kell
tennem nekem is valamit! Kapkodó, de érthető beszéd volt ez.
Fogták a poharukat és mikor az ifjú Willatz ivott, a lány nem pillantott
fel. De Mariane kisasszony vigyázott és villámgyorsan felvetette a
tekintetét a pohár szélén. Olyan gyorsan történt ez, hogy a szeme
látszólag meg se rebbent. A hajában kis ezüst villa volt. Nem valami
modern ékszer, csak két ága volt, még hozzá nagyon kicsinyek,
egyetlen ékben futottak össze, mint egy kigyónyelv.
Willatz aztán elbúcsúzott és megígérte, hogy nemsokára eljön
ujra. Elment a távirdába az állomás főnökéhez. Hiszen ott dolgozott
a kis Gottfred is. Gottfred csinos, finom legényke volt, de mégis
inkább Baardsen érdekelte Willatzot. A távirász megőszült és kopott
ruhában járt, mint mindig, de azért csak imponált az embereknek és
mindig olyan széles volt a válla. A cselló a sarokban állt. Baardsen
éppen indulni készült hazulról, de megint letette a kalapját és
székkel kínálta meg Willatzot.
Bocsásson meg, hogy csak faszékkel kínálhatom, mondta. A
látogatás jól eshetett neki, mert udvarias volt, szórakoztató és
szeretetreméltó. Nem is rosszak ezek a faszékek, mondta, az
itteniek se rosszabbak, mint a többi. Recsegnek és inognak egy
kicsit, de mindig is inogtak, amióta itt vagyok és rémesen ropognak
az eresztékeikben, mikor ráül az ember. De azért nem romlanak és
nem mennek tönkre. Szinte jókedvűek. Egyébként a legnagyobb
érdeklődéssel figyeltem az ön pályáját, Holmsen úr. Bár nem sokat
értek a művészetéhez, de az ujságokban olvastam önről.
De hiszen ön is ugyanazt a művészetet gyakorolja. Nagyon jól
emlékszem még a gyönyörű gordonkajátékára.
Baardsen a hangszerére pillantott, de rögtön el is fordította az
arcát.
Itt szándékozik maradni a nyáron, Holmsen úr?
Igen, és akkor önnek megint el kell jönnie hozzám és majd együtt
játszunk. Most már valamivel többet tudok, mint legutóbb.
Köszönöm, nagyon szívesen elmegyek.
És maga is, Gottfred!
Gottfred szerény volt és csak meghajlással fejezte ki köszönetét.
Egész idő alatt csak állt a helyén.
Meg szabad néznem a csellóját? kérdezte Willatz.
Persze, megnézhette. Megpengette a húrokat és őszintén
megcsodálta.
Bizony, csodás hangszer ez.
Nekem olyan, mint egy ember, mondta Baardsen és szeretettel,
emberséggel beszélt a csellójáról. Egy távírász meg egy cselló,
mondta s önmagát gúnyolta. Így van ez. Itt ülünk mi ketten és
egyengetjük a boldogságunk útját. A mi jó Gottfredünk pedig hisz
bennük, elhallgat és megcsodál. Ilyenkor csak ülünk itt és nagyok
vagyunk és a Göncölszekér játszik az Orion ködének… Gyönyörűen
állnak idén a vetések az ön földjein, Holmsen úr.
Csak most vette észre Willatz, hogy Baardsen kifejezései kissé
furcsák. Azt felelte, hogy igen, jónak igérkezik a termés.
Csak az édesapja hiányzik, nem járja már be a lován a vidéket.
Baardsen szórakozottan játszott a késével. Ez amolyan bűvös
kés volt, a pengéje eltünt a nyelében, ha megnyomták. Mikor
észrevette, hogy Willatzot ez idegesíti, megint letette a kést az
asztalra.
Igen, és az édesanyja is, folytatta. Nagyszerűen tudott lovagolni.
Általában, micsoda idők voltak azok!… Látta már Landmarck
lelkészt?
Még nem.
Éppen őrá kellett gondolnom. Valahogyan más, mint a többi
ember itt és rászorul a hívők elnézésére. Nagyon okos dolog, hogy
ért az asztalossághoz. Mechanikus és pap egyszemélyben. Hallottak
már ilyen keveréket? Egyébként tudhatja azt az ember, hogy milyen
keveréknek szánták? Az arisztokraták már kivesztek. Nem egészen
száz év előtt még föltekintettek rájuk, most már egyet se látni
semerre, láthatatlanok ezen a tájon, csak a részvét kutatja fel őket.
Nem tudom, lehet, hogy ez jó így a világnak, én nem törődöm vele,
de talán megint le kellene gyűrni Spartacust. Ez nem is
lehetetlenség. Még egyszer le kellene gyűrni. Hátha ez volna jobb a
világnak. De Landmarck lelkész, mint keverék, mindenesetre
furcsaság és erupciónak köszönheti a létét.
Ifjú Willatz felkelt és indulni készült.
Tehát az urak meglátogatnak, ugyebár, mondta. Nagyobbrészt
lent tartózkodom a téglaégetőben.
Baardsen kikisérte és a ház előtt feltette a kalapját.
A munkásaim után kell néznem, mondta mosolyogva. Theodor
Jensen színházat épít és én vagyok az építésze.
Köszönt és széles vállát végigringatta a csónakházhoz vezető
úton.
Mikor ifjú Willatz elhaladt a bolt előtt, Theodor kilépett az ajtón és
úgy látszott, mintha meg akarná szólítani. Ez aznap már másodszor
történt volna és ezért Willatz tovább akart menni. Meglepetten
olvasta el az új címtáblán a bolt fölött: P. Jensen kézmű- és
gyarmatárú kereskedése. Aranyozott betűk voltak.
Szabad-e megkérnem, hogy fáradjon be a boltunkba, hogy egy
kis fogalma legyen a mi üzletünkről? mondta Theodor.
Willatz a homlokát ráncolta kicsit, az órájára nézett és azt
mondta:
Majd máskor.
Csak azért gondolom, hogy látni méltóztassék, mennyire
szükséges az üzlet kibővítése. Az a baj, hogy nincs telkünk, se
földünk. Ha lenne olyan kegyes, akár csak innen a lépcsőről
körülnézni. Nem is kell tovább fáradnia, ha nem tetszik.
De nem tudom, miért tenném, mondta Willatz kelletlenül, aztán
engedett és követte Theodort a boltba.
Ó, Theodornak volt esze és élt is az alkalommal! Hiszen sokat ért
az, hogy az ifjú Holmsen urat, a hazatért földbirtokost látták az
oldalán… soha ennél kedvezőbb alkalma nem nyílhatott. Az új áruk
megérkeztek. Finom és drága áruk. De nem volt hely a számukra,
halomszámra feküdtek mindenütt és a bolt tele volt emberrel. Hát
nem kellett Theodornak okvetlenül kibővítenie az üzletét?
Méltóztassék csak idenézni, mondta Teodor és az ujjával kifelé
mutatott. A kézműárú osztály, ahol a szöveteket és ruhákat
helyeztük el, túlságosan kicsi.
Mindenki az ajtó felé fordult és odanézett. Az ifjú Willatz azonban
nem állhatott csak egyhelyben, hogy oldalt nézzen be egy ajtó
hasadékán. Kénytelen volt be is lépni a boltba és Theodor útat
csinált neki, felütötte a csapódeszkát, de Willatz megköszönte és
megállt az ajtónál.
A helyiség csakugyan kicsinek bizonyúlt ezen a napon. A tavaszi
cikkek megtöltötték az egész házat. Zsúfolásig megtelt minden és
pénz csörgött ma minden kézben. A nők csak úgy duskáltak a
kelmékben és blúzokban, az asszonyok és lányok mindjárt
elvesztették a fejüket, csak úgy égtek a perverz izgalomban,
megszédítette őket a muszlin és az úgynevezett svájci selyem
színpompája. Valóságos orgia volt az, a cselédek orgiája. Ez a
Theodor ugyancsak értette a dolgát, ide tudta hozni Segelfossba az
egész nagyvilágot.
Mi mindenféle holmi volt itt sorjában vagy tíz szinültig töltött
papírdobozban? Hajfésűk, hajcsattok és celluloid hajdíszek
mindenféle elérhető áron. Aztán kézitáskák és bőrutánzatú cipők,
hatalmas bronzszínű keresztcsattokkal. Meg aztán gallérok! Bizony,
csak úgy hemzsegtek minden színben és stílusban: Maria Stuart és
sätevölgyi váltakoztak egymással. Egy bérmálkozó fiú íróasztali
garnitúrát vásárol, sok ezüst van a holmikon és angyalok tartják a
tolltartó üvegoldalát. A tintatartónak is ezüst a lába és az ezüstben
helyet hagytak, ahová a tulajdonos is bevésheti a nevét. A férfiak –
régi megszokásból – a bolt másik oldalán tartózkodtak az előbbi
borozóasztal helyén. Most már nem volt szabad bort és sört
árusítani, de spirituszt és hajvizet lehetett vásárolni, esetleg a
helyszínen meg is kóstolni. Azt se lehetett megtiltani, hogy két
jóbarát néha-néha össze ne találkozzék a borozóasztal mellett és a
zsebéből ki ne húzzon egy kis innivalót. De azért mégis csak végük
volt a régi jó időknek, most már rum se akadt elegendő
mennyiségben, hogy érdemes lett volna nekifeküdni, meg aztán –
asszonyok voltak túlsúlyban idebent.
A hajfésűk körül nagy alkudozás folyt. Volt ott egy fésű, a közepét
vörös üveggyöngy ékítette, ez volt az egyetlen gyöngyös fésű,
valószínűleg csak betévedt a többi közé, Kornelius inas azonban
rögtön külön rekeszbe akarta tenni. Miért teszi el? Mennyibe kerül az
a fésű? Okvetlenül meg akarom venni. A fiatal Theodor ugyan éppen
előkelő társaságban van, de a szeme sohase nyugszik és most
odakiált: A vörös drágaköves fésű nem eladó!
Az ifjú Willatz odafordítja a fejét. Ki az a vöröshajú lány ott? És
megismeri Daverdanát, – gyermek volt még, mikor a lány a
kastélyban szolgált és ott mutogatta a csodás bronzvörös haját. Az
alku teljesen elfoglalja.
Nem kapom meg azt a fésűt? kérdezi.
Mit kezdenél vele? kérdi Kornelius. Hiszen az sárga fésű, nem is
illik a hajadba.
Igen, de egy vörös kő van rajta.
Kornelius félreteszi a fésűt.
Akkor hát Thedor oda akarja ajándékozni valakinek? mondja
Daverdana nyílt szóval.
Theodor meghallotta ezt és rögtön megváltoztatta a szándékát.
Talán meg akarja mutatni, hogy milyen nagy férfiú és hogy a fésűnek
még sincsen semmi jelentősége a szemében, vagy pedig fél a
Daverdana nyelvétől, mert a lány ugyanolyan pletyka természetű
volt, mint a bátyja, Julius.
Jól van, add oda neki a fésűt! kiáltja Theodor.
És így Daverdana megkapta a vörös üveggyöngyös fésűt.
Cégünk mindent megtesz, hogy a vevőit kielégítse, mondja most
Theodor az ifjú Willatznak. Ugy tapasztaltuk, hogy ez mégis csak a
leghelyesebb eljárás. És arra kérném önt, méltóztassék egy kis időt
szentelni az én kérésemnek. Ön látja, mi folyik itt és el fogja hinni,
hogy Rasch ügyvéd csupa rosszindulatból hozna konkurrenciát a
nyakamra, hogy aláássa vele Segelfoss virágzó kereskedelmét.
Theodor beszélt, mint a vízfolyás. Néhány fiatal lány egy svájci
selyemből készült sárga kiskabát körül csoportosul. Fekete
selyemrojtok és arany paszomántok diszítették, valóságos művészi
munka volt, pompás darab, könnyű és vékony, mint valami földöntúli
selyempapírkabát, de azért mégis jó hasznát lehetett venni idelent a
földön is. A kincsre alkudozott egy lány is, a fogfájás miatt kendőt
kötött a szája körül, a többiek azonban igyekeztek visszatartani a
szándékától, elmagyarázták neki, hogy a kabát nagyon drága és szó
ami szó, az ő számára túlságosan finom volna – hova gondolsz,
Florina? Florinának azonban már megvolt a saját véleménye a
dolgokról, ami pedig az árat illeti, nem is csinált titkot belőle, hogy az
egyik zsebéből ki tudja fizetni, sőt ha akarja, még drágább dolgokat
is vehetne. A gyapjukendőt visszatólta a szájáról és úgy kérdezte:
És milyen alkalommal hordják az ilyen kiskabátot?
Kornelius önkénytelenül is elnevette magát.
Hogy mikor hordják az ilyesmit? Nos, hát ez természetes, ez nem
valami hálóköpeny, hanem egy sárga nyári kiskabát olyan időkre,
amikor a télikabát már meleg. Ennek a kabátnak pedig egészen
különös szabása van, ilyet hordanak most a hölgyek a fővárosban.
Ezt nem kérdezte senki! kiáltott oda Theodor fontoskodó hangon.
Ha jól értettem, azt akarod tudni, Florina, mikor hordják az ilyen
kiskabátot. Nos hát, fölveheted minden időben, csak éppen akkor
nem, ha a vecsernyére mégy, mert oda ugyebár feketében kell
menned? Egyébként azonban viselheted, amikor tetszik. Nagyon
elegáns kis darab és az egész vidéken egyedül neked lesz ilyen. –
De Holmsen úr, csakugyan nem parancsol befáradni?
Most észreveszik Willatzot a férfiak is a borozóasztal mellett,
egyik a másik után odajön, hogy üdvözölje és kezet szorítson vele.
Willatznak egy helyben kell maradnia és még jó, hogy keztyű van a
kezén. Mindenki az apjáról beszél, nagyszerű, igazi úr volt az a
maga módján, kissé heves, de ugyanabban a pillanatban már ismét
jóságos úr, amilyennek kell. Ők is gyakran üdvözölték a hadnagy
urat és az mindig is fogadta a köszönésüket és a fejével bólintott
vissza. A hadnagy úr mindig nyeregben ült és a lova barna volt és
sárga a sörénye. És Holmsen úr édesanyja, a nagyságos asszony,
gyakran énekelt a templomban, olyan hangot se hallottak még azóta.
És a segelfossi kastély, ó, oda bárki elmehetett, ha valami búja-baja
volt, hacsak lehetett, segítettek rajta. Bizony úgy volt az. És most az
Uristen magához szólította mindkettőt…
Ha kaphatnánk egy kis földcsíkot a bolttól a partig, akkor még
mindent meg lehetne menteni, mondja közben Theodor.
… És most nyugszanak a sírjukban, folytatják az emberek
rendületlenül. Hiába, ez már az emberi sors. És Holmsen úr is, úgy
látszik, sokat fáradozik.
Willatz bólint az emberek felé és eltávozik. Egész idő alatt alig
szól egy szót is. Most elmegy a téglaégetőbe, a két szobájába,
ahová el akar rejtőzni, hogy ott kitartó szorgalommal alkosson végre
valami maradandót… Mert az eszében se volt, hogy csak töltse az
időt és estétől reggelig lustálkodjék, hanem igenis dolgozni akart. A
zongora már itt állt, a ruháit pedig Pauline kicsomagolta a
bőröndökből, minden a legnagyobb rendben volt, a nyújtó és a
trapéz még az előbbi alkalomról ittmaradtak. A falakon fegyverek és
revolver, horgászbotok és vadászkések, ritka hangszerek, fuvolák,
okarinák és kilyukgatott kagylók, igen, mindenféle kagyló, még
zenélni is lehetett rajtuk. Az ifjú Willatz most hozzálátott, hogy a
megmaradt holmit kiszedje a bőröndökből, a legkülönbözőbbb
körömkeféket hozta magával, három pár selyem rövidharisnyát és
mindenféle más szép és drága dolgot. Néhány fémtárgyat az
asztalon helyezett el, egy sárga üvegflakon nem illett a többihez,
azért az egyik falipolcon szorítottak csak neki helyet. Az ifjú Willatz
mindenféle rajzszereket is hozott magával, ecseteket is és
festéktubusokat. Az édesanyja is bizonyosan rajzolgatott volna
ebben a helyzetben, – ez már hozzátartozott a hangulathoz. Végül is
mindent sikerült elrendezni, valamennyi tárgy a méltó helyére került
és Willatz birtokába vette a szobákat, az apja két szobáját, ahol a fiú
zongorázni akart és komponálni és dolgozni vadul, esztelenül. Mert
ha itt se lehet, akkor seholse…

Ebook The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Inequalities and The Life Course 1St Edition Magda Nico Gary Pollock Eds Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ebook The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Inequalities and The Life Course 1St Edition Magda Nico Gary Pollock Eds Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Routledge Handbook of

Contemporary Inequalities and the Life

Structure and Agency in Young People s Lives Theory

The Routledge Handbook of the State in Premodern India

The Routledge Handbook of State Owned Enterprises 1st

Routledge Handbook of Contemporary African Migration

Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social

Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary

The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene 1st

Existentialism and Excess The Life and Times of Jean

Gary Pollock is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He cur-

Edited by Magda Nico and Gary Pollock

ISBN: 978-1-138-60150-5 (hbk)

List of figures xii

2 Poverty and economic ­insecurity in the life course 15

4 Life course inequality and p­ olicy: a focus on child well-being 39

5 Studying social inequality over the life course in modern

6 The analysis of i­nequality in life trajectories: an integration

7 Evolution of COVID-19 lethality and geographically contrasting

8 Health inequalities across the life course: theories, statistical pitfalls,

9 Mental health inequalities 113

10 How an analysis of lifespan i­nequality can contribute to our

11 Two centuries of inequalities: disability and partnership in Sweden 136

12 The Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and the life course 152

13 Concepts of social stratification—static and dynamic perspectives 175

14 Optimising the use of m­ easures of social stratification in r­ esearch

15 Stagnation and i­nequality in a historical view: a comment on

16 Things can’t only get better: inequality and democracy

17 Expansion and improved p­ ermeability of post-­secondary

18 Educational expansion across c­ ohorts and over the life

19 Class in successive life courses in Britain since 1945 252

20 Mapping young ­Norwegians’ self-projects and ­future orientations 261

21 Care inequality in later life in ageing societies: the unequal

23 Family formation and s­ ocial ­inequalities: a life course perspective 300

24 Farewell’s children: using the life course perspective to understand

25 The mutual constitution of gendered and sexualised inequalities

26 Gender trajectories and the p­ roduction of inequalities from a life

27 Inequalities in work and the intersectional life course 349

28 LGBTIQ+ life course i­nequalities and queer temporalities 362

29 The centrality of race to ­inequality across the world-system 373

30 A life course approach to u ­ nderstanding ethnic health inequalities in

31 The inequalities of empire: comparative perspectives 394

32 How the COVID-19 pandemic is shifting the migrant-inequality

13.1 Basic model of status attainment 178

6.1 Main specificities of the clusters identified through the multichannel SA

Kevin Albertson is Professor of Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University with

José Fernando Serrano-Amaya is Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages

Toni C. Antonucci is the Elizabeth M. Douvan Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the

Yener Bayramoğlu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Alice Salomon University of ­Berlin.

André Berchtold is Associate Professor in Statistics at the University of Lausanne. He spe-

Gwendolin J. Blossfeld is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bamberg. Her

Hans-Peter Blossfeld is Emeritus of Excellence at the University of Bamberg. He previ-

Pia N. Blossfeld is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University. Her research

Danilo Bolano is Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne. He is a social demographer

Stefano Cantalini is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social and Political

Pearl A. Dykstra is Professor of Empirical Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Haridhan Goswami is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan Univer-

Joseph F. Hair, Jr, is a Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of South

Jutta Heckhausen is a Professor at the Department of Psychological Science in the Univer-

Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo is Associate Professor of History at the University of C­ oimbra.

Dharmi Kapadia is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her research

Kateryna Karhina is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychosocial

Fabian Kratz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology of the University

2 Poverty and economic insecurity in the life course 15

4 Life course inequality and p olicy: a focus on child well-being 39

6 The analysis of inequality in life trajectories: an integration

10 How an analysis of lifespan inequality can contribute to our

14 Optimising the use of m easures of social stratification in r esearch

15 Stagnation and inequality in a historical view: a comment on

17 Expansion and improved p ermeability of post-secondary

18 Educational expansion across c ohorts and over the life

20 Mapping young Norwegians’ self-projects and future orientations 261

23 Family formation and s ocial inequalities: a life course perspective 300

26 Gender trajectories and the p roduction of inequalities from a life

28 LGBTIQ+ life course inequalities and queer temporalities 362

29 The centrality of race to inequality across the world-system 373

30 A life course approach to u nderstanding ethnic health inequalities in

Yener Bayramoğlu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Alice Salomon University of Berlin.

Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo is Associate Professor of History at the University of C oimbra.

Elisabetta Ruspini is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Interdepartmental

Pedro Vasconcelos is a Professor in Sociology at the ISCTE-University Institute of L isbon.