Events

How do life trajectories evolve over time, across domains, and in context? How much do birth circumstances constrain where people end up? I will describe two works in progress that address these classic questions with new approaches, using rich, population-scale registry data from the Netherlands and inspired by new AI methods. First, to study how life trajectories evolve, we develop the "book of life" approach, which represents life course data as a textual narrative - rather than as a vector of numbers. Then, we fine-tune an open-weight large-language model (LLM) on millions of these narratives in order to predict life outcomes, such as having a child. This approach opens new possibilities in life course research, including probabilistic prediction of sequences of life events across domains. Second, we ask: how much do birth circumstances constrain life outcomes? Using 200,000 twin pairs who share birth circumstances — everything measured and unmeasured about family, social position, and historical timing — we estimate how much of life is determined at birth versus shaped by what comes after. This approach also reveals fundamental limits to prediction, no matter how sophisticated the model or complete the data. I'll conclude by discussing the shared infrastructure needed to help researchers take advantage of the new opportunities created by registries and AI.