Family Demographic Processes and In-Work Poverty: A Systematic Review
This article reviews ever published quantitative evidence on in-work poverty and family demographic processes in OECD and EU-28 countries. Despite the increasing attention to in-work poverty in Europe and beyond, a comprehensive and critical review on how family demographic processes shape in-work poverty risks is still missing. Our systematic review consists of two parts: First, we provide a quantitative review of results from cross-sectional analyses that estimate the association between in-work poverty and parental home leaving, cohabitation, parenthood, union formation, and union dissolution. This allows us to formulate tentative conclusions about whether and in which direction family demographic processes are associated with in-work poverty. Second, we perform a narrative review that pays special attention to research implementing longitudinal designs with household panel data and alternative operationalizations of pivotal variables. We discuss theoretical and methodological challenges for future studies linking in-work poverty and family demography.