Life course perspectives suggest that later-life health reflects long-term social patterns over an individual’s life: in particular, the occurrence and timing of key roles and transitions. Such social patterns have been demonstrated empirically for multiple aspects of fertility and partnership histories, including timing of births and marriage, parity, and the presence and timing of a marital disruption. Most previous studies have, however, addressed particular aspects of fertility or partnership histories singly. We build on this research by examining how a holistic classification of family life course trajectories from ages 18 to 50, incorporating both fertility and partnership histories, is linked to later-life physical health for a sample of Australian residents. Our results indicate that long-term family life course trajectories are strongly linked to later-life health for men but only minimally for women. For men, family trajectories characterized by early family formation, no family formation, an early marital disruption, or high fertility are associated with poorer physical health. Among women, only those who experienced both a disrupted marital history and a high level of fertility were found to be in poorer health.

As a perspective developed primarily in anthropology, ‘transnationalism’ has until recently been dominated by ethnographic and textual analyses. While not problematic for any particular study, the overwhelming dominance of these methodologies has created two major theoretical shortcomings; a tendency to inflate the prevalence of transnational models of living, and the attribution of an egalitarian or emancipatory character to transnationalism, generally in the absence of systematic evidence. In this article we attempt to remedy these problems by examining the frequency and determinants of one tangible indicator of transnational activity in migrants to Australia: visits home. Our results suggest three important conclusions: 1) not all migrants visit home at all, and only about 11 per cent do so on a regular basis; 2) there are major between-group differences in migrants’ capacity to visit home; and 3) the earlier concepts of assimilation and migration order are of substantial significance in understanding transnationalism.

This systematic review and meta‐analysis synthesized evidence of the association between 24‐h movement behaviors and social–emotional health and cognitive development in children and adolescents aged 3–18 years from studies using compositional data analysis. Systematic literature searches were conducted on five electronic databases from January 2015 to December 2024. Studies were eligible if they assessed sleep, moderate‐to‐vigorous intensity physical activity, light intensity physical activity, and sedentary time. Eligible studies also examined associations between movement behaviors and social–emotional health or cognitive development using compositional data analysis in children and adolescents aged 3–18 years. Pooled effect sizes were estimated using cluster robust variance meta‐analysis. A total of 19 studies (5 longitudinal, 14 cross‐sectional) encompassing 11 826 participants were included. Meta‐analysis showed that engaging in more moderate‐to‐vigorous intensity physical activity, getting more sleep, and spending less time sedentary relative to other movement behaviors was favorably associated with social–emotional health; albeit, the observed relationships were small in magnitude. The association for sleep was stronger among adolescents compared to children. No components of 24‐h movement behavior compositions were associated with cognitive development. These findings suggest that engaging in healthy movement behavior compositions may be beneficial for social–emotional health in young people, although the link between 24‐h movement behavior compositions and cognitive development is less clear.

Introduction: Extracurricular activity participation is associated with positive academic, health, and behavioral outcomes for adolescents, but these findings may reflect unobserved confounding rather than participation effects.Method: Data were drawn from 3885 adolescents aged 12–15 in a nationally representative cohort of Australian adolescents. Effects of participation in three kinds of extracurricular activity (team sport, individual sport, and arts) on an array of outcomes were modeled using fixed‐effects regression to account for potential unobserved confounding.Results: Strong bivariate relationships between all forms of activity participation and positive adolescent outcomes were found. These associations were much smaller in the fixed‐effects analysis, but beneficial effects of sports for mental health and arts for peer group characteristics remained statistically significant. Minimal effects of extracurricular activity participation for academic achievement were found.Conclusion: Extracurricular activity participation has beneficial effects on adolescents' mental health and exposure to peers' delinquent behavior.

People with disabilities experience persistent, multifaceted disadvantage across the life course. The origins of life course disadvantage among people with disabilities may stem, in part, from exclusion during developmentally sensitive periods in childhood. Time use among adolescents represents a potentially important mechanism implicated in the emergence of disability-related disadvantage, but previous research has largely neglected the time use of school age adolescents with disabilities. Utilizing nationally representative time diary data, this study investigated disability-related differences in adolescents’ time use, and how these gaps vary by sex and age. Results indicated that disability-related differences in time use are widespread and substantial in magnitude. Adolescents with disabilities spend more time in screen-based leisure, alone, and with mothers, and less time in educational activities than non-disabled adolescents. Boys with disabilities additionally spend less time in structured leisure and with peers than non-disabled boys. Differences in time alone, with peers, and in screen-based leisure increase in magnitude at older ages. We conclude that differential time use in adolescence may contribute to multiple persistent disadvantages experienced by people with disabilities over the life course.