ABSTRACT
Age-period-cohort (APC) analysis analysis has the unique ability to depict parsimoniously the entire complex of social, historical, and environmental factors that simultaneously affect individuals and populations of individuals. It has thus been widely used to address questions of enduring importance to the studies of social change, etiology of diseases, aging, and population processes and dynamics. Birth cohorts are the most commonly examined unit of analysis in APC analysis. A birth cohort moves through life together and encounters the same historical and social events at the same ages. This book shows some ways in which the statistical models and methods and research designs can be applied to open new possibilities for APC analysis. It provides an introduction of the generalized linear mixed model framework to show how innovative estimation methods and new model specifications resolve the “model identification problem” that has hampered the development of APC analysis for the past decades.
