Comparative Population Studies (CPoS - E-Journal)
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Social Resources are Associated With Higher Fertility Intentions in Contemporary Finland
Full text linkLower childbearing intentions can stem from a lack of social resources. However, not only actual but also perceived social support might signal that parents and parents-to-be will not be alone after having a child. Using register and GGS-Finland data from 2021-22, we investigate how emotional and instrumental support received from parents and other social network members, as well as a person’s subjective feeling that their social network is sufficient (measured as the absence of loneliness), are associated with fertility intentions. Logistic regression models reveal that receiving instrumental support ‒ especially financial support ‒ from parents and other relatives (but not non-kin) is associated with higher childbearing intentions. Not feeling lonely is also associated with higher childbearing intentions, particularly among individuals aged 26-30 years. Gender and partnership status nuance these associations. We conclude that social resources ‒ indicated by both perceived and received support ‒ shape childbearing intentions for those approaching or in prime childbearing age. The lack of perceived social resources among young adults may contribute to relatively low fertility, even in a high-income country with generous family policies such as Finland
Educational Expansion as a Driver of Longer Working Lives? : Regression Decomposition Analysis of Changes in Labour Force Participation at Older Ages in Twenty-first Century Europe
Full text linkThis study investigates the contribution of educational expansion to changes in labour force participation among Europeans aged 55-74 between 2000 and 2019, while accounting for changes in educational inequalities in labour market activity. We use data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) for 26 countries and Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods to analyse the extent to which changes in the education structure may account for rises in labour force participation rates among older workers in these countries, and the degree to which returns to education have changed. Overall, we found that educational expansion is positively associated with increases in labour force participation, albeit with substantial cross-country variation in the scale of this association. A driving factor was the decrease in the share of the population with low education levels, followed by an increase in the share of those with high education levels. While activity rates rose in most countries and among all levels of education, the largest increases were observed among people with a medium level of education. Activity rates of low-educated older workers, especially women, grew at a substantially lower pace in some countries, exacerbating educational inequalities in labour force participation at older ages. The study suggests that educational expansion has been a driver of longer working lives in Europe. However, it also indicates that changes in health, working conditions and age norms at the microlevel, as well as pension and labour market reforms at the macrolevel, can be assumed to have played a dominant role in countries where increases in labour force participation were the most significant
Cross-Sectional Association Between Life Expectancy and Unhealthy Life Years: Proof of Concept Tests of the CroHaM Hypothesis
Full text linkThe recently presented CroHaM hypothesis says (1) that longitudinal health domain-specific expansion and compression effects depend primarily on the health domains’ mortality risk and (2) that these effects exist equivalently in the cross-sectional context, affecting differences in healthy life years (HLY) between populations and subpopulations with different levels of life expectancy (LE). We test this hypothesis by analysing the association between LE and unhealthy life years (ULY) at age 50 for a large number of subpopulations. The analyses are carried out for three health domains which are differently related to mortality: poor self-perceived health and strong activity limitation with comparatively high mortality, and chronic morbidity with comparatively low risk of dying. Data on gender- and subpopulation-specific prevalence of these health conditions are taken from the Actual German Health Study 2012 (GEDA). LEs are estimated with the “Longitudinal Survival Method”, using data of the German Life Expectancy Survey. ULY are estimated with the “Sullivan Method”. Differences in ULY between each subpopulation and the total population and between women and men for each subpopulation are decomposed into the effects caused by differences in health (“health effect”) and mortality (“mortality effect”) with the “Nusselder/Looman Method”. The results confirm the CroHaM hypothesis: we find a positive relationship between LE and ULY only for chronic morbidity, whereas this relationship is negative for poor self-perceived health and strong activity limitation. However, when the mortality effect is controlled for, we find a negative relationship between LE and ULY for all three health domains. The practical relevance of these findings is discussed using the example of the so-called “gender paradox” in health and mortality. We conclude that the CroHaM hypothesis may describe an important determinant of life years spent with and without health impairment, and it may help to better understand and interpret trends and differentials in HLY or ULY based on cross-sectional data.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Levels and Trends of Health Expectancy: Understanding its Measurement and Estimation Sensitivity”
Parental Educational Homogamy and Children’s Tertiary Education in Europe
Full text linkIn this paper, we examine (1) whether parental educational homogamy is associated with children’s tertiary educational attainment in different European countries and (2) whether this association is moderated by families’ educational backgrounds. Using data from the European Social Survey and multilevel logistic regression models, we find that parental homogamy is important for children’s tertiary educational attainment. In particular, children of more highly educated homogamous parents are more likely to obtain a tertiary degree themselves. This parental homogamy association varies across countries. While the association is below the European average in Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, it is equal or close to average in Slovenia, Estonia, France, Poland, Ireland, Sweden, and Lithuania, and above average in Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Belgium. Our findings suggest that parental educational constellations should be examined more closely in further education inequality research.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”
Migration as a Tool for Social Resilience: Lessons From Two Case Studies
Full text linkFollowing the fall of socialism in East and Southeast Europe, widespread destabilisation of living conditions was accompanied by immense skill and cost mismatches. Both of these factors continue to contribute to substantial levels of brain drain, brain waste and de-skilling. We propose and discuss the migration-resilience nexus as a new paradigm that emphasises the instrumental dimension of movements and migrants’ agency in terms of the aspiration-capabilities framework. In this paper, we look at migration-specific contexts in two countries suffering from long-term emigration for different reasons. Migratory movements, including emigration and circular and return migration, are interpreted as “tools for social resilience”.
In many cases, migrants do not necessarily have the aspiration to migrate. Nevertheless, they can do so when conditions in their individual situation, such as material income, individual well-being or family status, change. Thus, in contrast to the few studies that have looked at migration and resilience so far, we focus on aspirations, decisions and movements as fundamental elements of a resilience strategy adopted by individuals to cope with permanent existential risk, constant harassment, socio-psychological stress or other threats. Our analysis pursues a comparative empirical approach. To cover the broad scope of this phenomenon, we chose Latvia and Albania as the study’s examples. Data on Albania is gathered using qualitative methods, while a quantitative approach is adopted in Latvia.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”
Trends and Cross-National Differences in Educational Homogamy in Europe: The Role of Educational Composition
Full text linkThe extent of educational homogamy has important consequences for social inequalities and social cohesion. However, little is known about current trends, cross-national differences, and the drivers of educational homogamy in Europe. This study aims to fill this gap by (a) describing trends in absolute educational homogamy (i.e., the share of similarly educated partners) and relative educational homogamy (i.e., homogamy corrected for the distribution of spouses’ education) for European countries; and (b) examining the association between a population’s educational composition and the level of absolute and relative educational homogamy. Given the large changes in the educational composition of European populations and the presumed consequences for absolute and relative educational homogamy, this focus on educational composition is warranted. Our aggregate-level regression analyses covering 36 countries and five birth cohorts (1940-1989) from the European Social Survey show that absolute and relative educational homogamy has not changed. However, this obscures variation by education group and country. We find that the extent of absolute educational homogamy in a country cohort is strongly associated with educational composition and observe statistical effects of educational expansion (positive for the higher educated), educational heterogeneity (negative), educational gender symmetry (positive), educational income inequality (positive), and educational reproduction (positive). Relative educational homogamy is only weakly associated with a population’s educational composition, and its effects are confined to gender symmetry (positive) and educational reproduction (positive). Our findings suggest that changes in educational composition in Europe affect educational homogamy in various directions and indicate that these effects come from structural opportunities rather than changing preferences for educational homogamy.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”
Editorial on the Special Issue “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”
Full text linkTrust and Fertility Intentions in High-Trust Sweden: An Exploratory Analysis
Full text linkTrust has recently received some attention in demographic literature as one potential factor for fertility considerations in post-industrial societies. It has been argued that trust is relevant in a number of different ways, including as a resilience mechanism against different perceived uncertainties that may affect childrearing decisions. Trust is also related to a host of positive political and economic outcomes, all of which enable childbearing. To date, studies have used macro-level or multilevel frameworks and a measure of social trust that focuses on confidence in fellow members of society. In our study, we use two novel modules of the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey 2021 (GGS2021) to study this relationship further. First, we analyse the associations between different measures of interpersonal and institutional trust on the one hand and individuals’ fertility intentions on the other. Second, we examine whether either interpersonal or institutional trust acts as a resilience mechanism against various individual and global uncertainties. The results do not show trust to be a decisive factor behind fertility intentions in Sweden. The absence of strong associations may be attributable to Sweden’s position as a notably high-trust society, with its inclusive labour markets and welfare services
Untangling the Role of Assortative Mating in Educational Reproduction in Twelve European Countries
Full text linkIn this study, we explore how educational differences in demographic behavior – in particular, mating patterns and fertility – mediate the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality in twelve European countries. Although this research interest itself is not new, we contribute to this debate by adopting a prospective approach and scaling it to include multiple countries and cohorts. To this end, we leverage a series of complementary datasets and the inferential method developed by Song and Mare (2015) and advanced by Skopek and Leopold (2020) to estimate the components of a stylized educational reproduction model. We then employ a simple decomposition analysis to quantify the contributions of different pathways to prospective educational reproduction rates across educational backgrounds and explore the differences across cohorts and countries. We report several findings. Most notably, (1) the intergenerational reproduction of educational inequality persists in all twelve countries and is barely offset by small (and declining) negative educational gradients in fertility, (2) educational differences in selection into partnership are small and do not account for much inequality, and (3) the role of assortative mating, where present, is ambiguous because it both reinforces inequality via its effects on resources within the family and offsets it via its effects on fertility.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”
Relative Resources in Couples and Their Childbearing Behavior in the United States
Full text linkA growing body of research indicates significant variation in the fertility-education relationship by partner education across high income countries. However, little is known on the education-fertility-couple nexus in the US context. The present study fills this gap. It investigates linkages between married couples’ relative socio-economic resources and their first and second birth transitions in the United States, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and a competing risk approach to model birth transitions and union dissolutions competing with first and second births independently. The study presents four findings. First, homogamous tertiary educated couples have the highest first and second birth rate, net of fertility preferences, indicating the relevance of resource pooling for family formation. Second, low-resource hypogamous and hypergamous couples have lower birth rates than most other pairings, underscoring that linkages between heterogamy and family formation may vary by the absolute level of the partners’ resources. Third, family income mediates first birth rate differences between homogamous highly educated couples and most other pairings. Lower first birth rates of hypogamous large distance couples, compared with homogamous tertiary educated couples, however, appear in part rooted in higher union dissolution rates. Fourth and finally, the higher second birth rate of homogamous highly educated couples was not mediated by any of the tested socio-economic mechanisms. More research is needed to investigate the mechanisms underlying this birth rate pattern found throughout high income societies.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Changes in Educational Homogamy and Its Consequences”