Aging, Cohorts, and Methods
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Summary
This chapter provides guidelines for conducting cohort analysis in aging studies based on three commonly used research designs, including age-by-period tables of rates/proportions, repeated cross-sectional surveys, and accelerated longitudinal panels. It introduces new methods and models and gives examples of empirical analyses of specific datasets. It also discusses avenues for future research.
Publisher Summary
The essence of cohort analysis is the identification and quantification of different sources of variation that are associated with age, period, and/or cohort effects in an outcome of interest. Theoretical developments combined with new methodological tools and data sources have contributed to considerable growth in aging research in the social sciences over the past few decades. Researchers often need to compare age-specific data recorded at different points in time and from different birth cohorts. A systematic study of such data, termed the age-period-cohort (APC), or simply “cohort analysis,” is one of the most useful means to gain a greater understanding of the process of aging within and across human populations. This chapter aims to provide some useful guidelines on how to conduct cohort analysis. The expository strategy is to provide those guidelines using illustrative empirical analyses. The state of knowledge on cohort analysis in aging research in sociology, demography, and epidemiology is summarized. Applications of cohort analysis using linear regression models are based on the age-by-period matrix. The objective is to provide qualitative understanding of patterns of age period, cohort, and two-way age by period and age by cohort variations. The most effective way of accounting for aging-related phenomena and social and demographic change is to develop alternative approaches that do not treat age, period, and cohort as independent covariates in an additive fixed effects model. These techniques, coupled with new and superior data sources, set the stage for enhancing the understanding of the complex interplay of human aging, cohort characteristics, and historical events and processes.
CHAP
Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences
The Handbooks of Aging
Yang, Yang
Binstock, Robert H.
George, Linda K.
Rando, Thomas A.
Carstensen, Laura L.
2011
17-30
7th
Academic Press
London
10.1016/B978-0-12-380880-6.00002-2
1086