LifeSentence: Language models can encode human life course trajectories from longitudinal panel data
Researchers have developed LifeSentence, a novel model that adapts large language models for analyzing longitudinal human life course data. This model can encode complex life trajectories from limited panel data by treating life events as natural-language records. LifeSentence demonstrates superior performance compared to traditional statistical methods and other deep learning approaches, showing significant improvements in predicting events and their timing, as well as reconstructing chronological order. Notably, it can identify social stratification patterns like the gender wage gap and motherhood penalty without explicit supervision, offering new avenues for biographical research and counterfactual exploration. AI
IMPACT Enables deeper analysis of human life trajectories from limited data, potentially improving social science research and personalized interventions.