Patterns of Age Variability in Life Course Transitions

Abstract

This study examines age variability in life course transitions using retrospective data collected through the 1995 Canadian General Social Survey on the Family. The analysis of interquartile ranges obtained through life tables shows that school completion, and for women, start of regular work have become more age-homogenous. For family events such as home-leaving, first union, first marriage, and first and last birth there was a move towards narrower age ranges in which major events are experienced up to the cohort born in the first half of the 1940s, or in terms of period, up to around 1970s. Subsequently, from cohorts born in 1946 and later, age ranges started to widen.