Concept
The life cycle refers to the regular sequence of stages that individuals and families pass through: birth, growing up, marriage, raising children, retirement and old age. Life-cycle theory emphasizes that each stage brings different tasks and needs, different resources and different social risks. Social welfare, family studies, developmental psychology and economics have each developed the idea in their own way.
Rowntree's poverty cycle
The British social investigator Seebohm Rowntree (1901), surveying working-class households in York, found that poverty was not a fixed lifelong condition but rose and fell with life stages.
- Childhood, while parents raise children: poverty
- Youth, once one starts earning: out of poverty
- Early middle age, raising young children: poverty again
- Later middle age, when children earn or leave: relative comfort
- Old age, when one can no longer work: poverty again
This W-shaped cycle provided the rationale for social security programs such as child benefits and old-age pensions that secure income at the riskiest stages.
The family life cycle and developmental stages
Duvall (1957) described eight stages from family formation to dissolution (married couple, childbearing, preschool, school-age, teenage, launching, middle-aged parents and aging family) and set out developmental tasks for each. Together with family systems theory, which treats the family as an interacting system, it is a basic framework for family welfare and family life education. At the individual level, Erikson's eight psychosocial stages describe the psychological tasks of each stage.
Modigliani's life-cycle hypothesis
In economics, Modigliani and Brumberg (1954) proposed the life-cycle hypothesis: people try to keep consumption smooth in light of their expected lifetime income, so they save during high-earning working years and draw down savings in retirement. It underpins analysis of age-specific saving rates, the effect of population aging on national saving, and the design of public pensions.
Toward the life-course perspective
Classic life-cycle theory was criticized for assuming a "standard" life in which marriage, childbirth and retirement occur in a fixed order. As remaining single, divorce and remarriage, childless families and later independence spread, the life-course perspective of Elder (1998) and others gained ground. It holds that lives unfold in diverse ways depending on historical time and place, the timing of transitions, linked lives and individual agency, and it highlights how early disadvantages accumulate.
Applications in social welfare
- Needs by stage: services are designed around stage-specific needs, such as childcare in infancy, education and protection in childhood and adolescence, jobs and housing in youth, work–family balance and caregiving in midlife, and income security and long-term care in old age.
- Social insurance and redistribution: paying contributions while working and receiving benefits in old age, sickness or unemployment can be seen as redistribution across one's life cycle.
- Policy design: Korea's life-stage welfare guides and life-cycle support for groups such as people with disabilities and multicultural families draw on this view. How to combine universal allowances with targeted aid ties into the debate on universalism and selectivism.
See also: Theories of Human Development
References
- Rowntree, B. S. (1901). Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London: Macmillan.
- Modigliani, F., & Brumberg, R. (1954). Utility analysis and the consumption function: An interpretation of cross-section data. In K. K. Kurihara (Ed.), Post-Keynesian Economics (pp. 388–436). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
- Duvall, E. M. (1957). Family Development. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
- Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York: W. W. Norton.
- Elder, G. H., Jr. (1998). The life course as developmental theory. Child Development, 69(1), 1–12.