%N 100360
%A RA Settersten
%A L Bernardi
%A J Härkönen
%A TC Antonucci
%A PA Dykstra
%A J Heckhausen
%A D Kuh
%A KU Mayer
%A P Moen
%A JT Mortimer
%A CH Mulder
%A TM Smeeding
%A T van der Lippe
%A GO Hagestad
%A M Kohli
%A R Levy
%A I Schoon
%A E Thomson
%V 45
%T Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens
%D 2020
%L discovery10107557
%K coronavirus disease 2019; life transitions; life trajectories; life domains; age; generation; cohort; social change; social inequality
%J Advances in Life Course Research
%I Elsevier BV
%O This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
%X The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic’s social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic’s short- and long-term consequences unfold.