scholarly journals Early Family Life Course Standardization in Sweden: The Role of Compositional Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-798
Author(s):  
Zachary Van Winkle
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Labour Market Participation ◽  
Compositional Changes ◽  
Early Family ◽  
Combine Sequence ◽  
Family Trajectories

Abstract The diversity of early family life courses is thought to have increased, although empirical evidence is mixed. Less standardized family formation is attributed to compositional changes in educational attainment, labour market participation, and childhood living conditions. I investigate whether and why family trajectories have become more or less standardized across birth cohorts in Sweden. I combine sequence metrics with Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions to assess the compositional shifts that drive changes in family formation standardization. Family trajectories of individuals born in 1952, 1962, and 1972 from age 18 to 35 are reconstructed using Swedish register data. My results demonstrate that early family formation has become more standardized across birth cohorts. Further, compositional differences between birth cohorts partially account for this standardization, especially for women. For example, higher levels of educational attainment are associated with family formation standardization. This substantiates arguments that family formation may re-standardize following the second demographic transition.

scholarly journals Genome-Wide Heritability Estimates for Family Life Course Complexity

Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Van Winkle ◽  
Dalton Conley
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Genetic Factors ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Age At First Birth ◽  
Genetic Contribution ◽  
Sequence Complexity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Family Trajectories

Abstract Sequence analysis is an established method used to study the complexity of family life courses. Although individual and societal characteristics have been linked with the complexity of family trajectories, social scientists have neglected the potential role of genetic factors in explaining variation in family transitions and events across the life course. We estimate the genetic contribution to sequence complexity and a wide range of family demographic behaviors using genomic relatedness–based, restricted maximum likelihood models with data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. This innovative methodological approach allows us to provide the first estimates of the heritability of composite life course outcomes—that is, sequence complexity. We demonstrate that a number of family demographic indicators (e.g., the age at first birth and first marriage) are heritable and provide evidence that composite metrics can be influenced by genetic factors. For example, our results show that 11% of the total variation in the complexity of differentiated family sequences is attributable to genetic influences. Moreover, we test whether this genetic contribution varies by social environment as indexed by birth cohort over a period of rapid changes in family norms during the twentieth century. Interestingly, we find evidence that the complexity of fertility and differentiated family trajectories decreased across cohorts, but we find no evidence that the heritability of the complexity of partnership trajectories changed across cohorts. Therefore, our results do not substantiate claims that lower normative constraints on family demographic behavior increase the role of genes.

Lone parenthood

Child Poverty ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Morag C. Treanor
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Childhood Poverty ◽  
Homogenous Group ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lone Parent ◽  
Lone Parents ◽  
Corrosive Effect

Chapter four explores the importance of, and relationship between, family formation, or ‘breakdown’ and lone parenthood in the context of childhood poverty. Few subjects excite the public and political imagination quite as much as the issue of lone parents. It is an area with strong connections to poverty, disadvantage, gendered inequalities, and the supposed breaching of normative values and expectations. I engage with myths and assumptions about lone parents and reveal the corrosive effect of demonising lone-parent family life on children’s lives and wellbeing. I show that relationships are dynamic, that lone parents are not a homogenous group, that a large proportion of children will spend time in a lone parent formation, and that how a government responds to lone parents in policy terms directly relates to how impoverished their children will be. This chapter also discusses how poverty and emotional mal-being are not inevitable consequences of separation and divorce. The role of separated fathers in lone parent families, particularly their financial contribution and involvement in their children’s lives, are explored.

scholarly journals Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment in Germany – The Last Five Decades

2009 ◽  
Vol 229 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Heineck ◽  
Regina T. Riphahn
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Child Outcomes ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Parental Background ◽  
School Attainment ◽  
The Impact

SummaryOver the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve “equality of opportunity”, i.e. to guarantee all pupils independent of parental background equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that Germany features particularly low intergenerational mobility with respect to educational attainment. This study investigates the development in intergenerational education mobility in Germany for the birth cohorts 1929 through 1978 with respect to secondary school attainment. We test whether the impact of parental educational background on child educational outcomes changed over time. In spite of massive public policy interventions and education reforms our results yield no significant reduction in the role of parental educational background for child outcomes over the last decades.

scholarly journals The Role of Fertility in the Demography of Grandparenthood: Evidence from Italy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Di Gessa ◽  
Valeria Bordone ◽  
Bruno Arpino
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Intergenerational Transfers ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Age At First Birth ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Italian Survey ◽  
Fertility Differentials ◽  
Compositional Changes

Abstract Grandparents play an important role in their family’s lives. However, little is known about the demography of grandparenthood. Given dramatic recent changes in fertility, we explore the role of number of children and age at first birth in the timing of the transition into grandparenthood focusing on Italy, a country with well-known North-South fertility differentials. We used data from the 2009 Italian Survey ‘Family and Social Relations’ (N = 10,186) to estimate median ages of grandparenthood across three birth cohorts of parents (1920–29; 1930–39; 1940–49). Findings show an overall postponement of age of grandparenthood of 5 years, shifting for women from early to mid- or late-50s (in the South and North, respectively). Such postponement is largely driven by family compositional changes: although the age of grandparenthood among mothers of three or more children has not changed much over cohorts, the percentage of mothers with such characteristic decreased significantly. The heterogeneity in experiencing the transition to grandparenthood has implications for intergenerational transfers and other roles in later life.

Does Long-Term Marriage Bring Less Frequent Disagreements?

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Russell Hatch ◽  
Kris Bulcroft
Keyword(s):  
Marital Conflict ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Household Tasks ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Over Time

Studies of marital conflict have concluded that the frequency of disagreements between spouses declines over time in a marital relationship. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households, the authors examine the frequency of marital disagreements concerning household tasks, money, sex, and spending time together reported by married women and men age 20 to 79. The study results refute a developmental explanation for marital disagreement, which posits that disagreements decline as marital partners accommodate themselves to one another over time. The results indicate, however, that increased marital duration may bring increased marital disagreements, depending on family life course stage (particularly, the presence of children in the home), and potentially also depending on spouses’ages and birth cohorts. The results also suggest a limited role of selective attrition in explaining the frequency of marital disagreements, in that couples who disagree more frequently are more likely to divorce or separate, particularly respondents of younger ages/birth cohorts, who have been married for relatively briefer periods of time.

Historical Trends in Childlessness

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1311-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald T. Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Average Family Size ◽  
Second World ◽  
Young Old

Changes in the rates of childlessness over time are explored using European, Australian, American, and Japanese data from censuses, national registers, and large-scale surveys. The trends are remarkably similar across the countries for which data are available: a peak in childlessness rates for the 1880-1910 birth cohorts, a more or less continuous drop across the 1910-1945 birth cohorts, and a steady rise across the cohorts born after the Second World War. Thus, contemporary older adults (particularly the “young old”) belong to generations for which the proportions childless are near the minimum ever recorded. The article examines the factors associated with the changes in rates of childlessness, and more particularly trends in marriage (e.g., median age at marriage and the proportions marrying), trends in family formation (e.g., median age at the first birth and average family size), and the role of voluntary and involuntary factors.

scholarly journals Intergenerational persistence of family formation trajectories among teenage-mothers and -fathers in Sweden

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Kalucza ◽  
Sergi Vidal ◽  
Karina Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Family Formation ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Swedish Population ◽  
Traditional Family ◽  
Early Parenthood ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Correlations ◽  
Family State ◽  
Early Family ◽  
Family Trajectories

AbstractIn this paper, we address the questions of whether early family trajectories of parents are reflected in childbearing teenagers, and how socio-economic and family background factors impact these intergenerational correlations. We use within-dyad sequence analysis to examine combined marital and childbearing trajectories, up to age 30, of two generations of a representative sample of childbearing teenagers born between 1975 and 1985 and their progenitors, drawn from the Swedish population register data. We find evidence for within-family persistence of early family trajectories, with better matches across family state sequences for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and their parents, than for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and parents of random birth cohort peers. Regression analysis shows that these intergenerational associations are stronger and occur among later-born siblings from non-traditional family backgrounds, and among families with lower socio-economic backgrounds. This study fills gaps in the knowledge of intergenerational family life course dynamics beyond the early parenthood event.

scholarly journals Family Life Course Trajectories: Results of the Sequence Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Dirsytė ◽  
Aušra Maslauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Analysis ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Family Demography ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
The Family

This paper aims to analyse the family life course trajectories of 1970–1984 birth cohorts in Lihuania. It applies the sequence analysis methods and is based on the Families and Inequalities Survey Dataset collected in 2019. The method provides the opportunities to examine the family life course in a holistic way and has not been used in family demography research in Lithuania so far. The results prove that cohabitation became a normative event in the family formation process, the duration of cohabitation increases, however marriage remains the dominant family arrangement for childrearing. Clasterization of sequences revealed four models of family life trajectories, that reflect the diversity and de-standartization of the family life course.

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