591 research outputs found
Transition to grandparenthood and early retirement in midlife
No full textThis paper aims to capture the interrelationship between two life transitions linking the generation of elderly parents and their adult children: early retirement and the transition to (grand)parenthood. A (grand)parents’ early retirement might be driven by the need to care for a grandchild. Conversely, the transition of their adult children into parenthood might be shaped by the availability of flexible, reliable, and affordable childcare provided by retired (grand)parents. Employing an event history approach, we examine the reciprocal influence that the birth of the first grandchild and early retirement have in midlife. Our study focuses on gender and socio-economic differences drawing on the SHARE multi-country dataset. Results show that becoming a grandparent increases the chances of early retirement for both men and women, slightly more among grandmothers than grandfathers. Among new grandfathers, those with higher education are more likely to go into early retirement compared to their less-educated counterparts. Early retirement, on the contrary, does not predict grandparenthood in a significant way, though there is a relatively higher chance of becoming a grandfather if the person who retired is highly educate
When partners’ disagreement prevents childbearing: A couple-level analysis in Australia
No full textBACKGROUND
Studies investigating the correspondence of birth intentions and birth outcomes focus
mainly on women’s and men’s intentions separately and disregard the fact that
reproductive decision-making is dyadic.
OBJECTIVE
We examine the intention–outcome link for fertility taking a genuine couple-level
approach. We aim to understand whether a heterosexual couple’s conflict is solved in
favour or against childbirth and whether the male or the female partner prevails in the
decision-making.
METHODS
Drawing on data from the survey Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia
(HILDA), we perform logistic regressions in which couples are the unit of analysis and
the variables are computed by combining both partners’ characteristics.
RESULTS
Results show that disagreement about having a first child is located between ‘agreement
on yes’ and ‘agreement on not,’ with half of disagreeing couples having a child. By
contrast, disagreement about having another child is shifted more towards ‘agreement on
not’ and most often prevents the birth of a child. Women prevail in the decision of having
a first child, irrespective of gender equity within the couple, while a symmetric double veto
model is at work if the decision concerns a second or additional child.
CONCLUSION
Couple disagreement is not always sufficient to prevent the birth of a child in a low
fertility country such as Australia, and the increasing level of gender equity within the
couple does not necessarily imply increasing female decision-making power on
childbearing issues
Union Formation under Conditions of Uncertainty: The Objective and Subjective Sides of Employment Uncertainty
No full textBACKGROUND The link between economic forces and family dynamics has received renewed attention in the present era of heightened uncertainty. Economic uncertainty has usually been linked to unfavorable labor market circumstances, such as unemployment and short-term contracts. Nonetheless, union formation may also be affected by subjective appraisals of employment conditions, including employment security and - acknowledging the prospective nature of uncertainty itself expectations of future employment.
OBJECTIVE This study seeks to empirically disentangle the effects of the objective and subjective sides of individual employment uncertainty on the entry into union.
METHODS We apply event history techniques to longitudinal data taken from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to examine whether and how objective measures of employment uncertainty (labor market status and contract type) and subjective measures (employment security and employment expectations) are associated with entry into a first union.
RESULTS Our results show that objective markers of employment uncertainty - unemployment or temporary (casual) jobs - inhibit entry into a union for both men and women. Furthermore, different appraisals of employment uncertainty affect union formation across employment conditions. When individuals face objective employment uncertainty while still expecting their employment situation to improve, either by exiting unemployment (in particular among men) or retaining their jobs (among both sexes), union formation is not necessarily postponed.
CONTRIBUTIO NWe stress the importance of considering how different future expectations influence family formation across different levels of objective uncertainty. The sole use of objective markers of employment uncertainty provides only a partial, and possibly inaccurate, perspective on union formation: the specter of the future also matters
Child disability as a family issue: a study on mothers' and fathers' health in Italy
No full textBackground Disability does not simply affect the health status of the individual who directly experiences that condition, but it has important consequences on the health and well-being of the other family members as well. Focusing on Italy, an extremely interesting test-bed due to its strong familialist welfare regime, we show significant spillover effects of children's disability on parental health and well-being.Methods We use data from a nationally representative household survey on almost 13 000 mothers and fathers and adopt a multivariate regression setting providing evidence that the disability of a child is negatively associated with parents' health and life satisfaction.Results Parents of a disabled child report lower levels of general and mental health, as well as lower levels of well-being compared with parents with a healthy child. Strong heterogeneity by gender and socio-economic characteristics is observed, with mothers being more affected by the disability status of the child than fathers. The estimated coefficients suggest that education remains an important protective factor even for parents of a disabled child.Conclusion This study claims and documents that child disability is an overlooked source of health disadvantage for parents. Such disadvantage is especially relevant for mothers and lower-educated parents, evidence that suggests the importance of taking an intersectional approach to study health disparities
Intentions and childbearing in a cross-domain life course approach: the case of Australia
No full textIn Australia and other affluent societies people tend to report a number of desired children
which is clearly higher than the number of children they eventually bear. In the effort to
explain such an inconsistency, demographers have studied the correlates of the link
between pregnancy intentions and births. Drawing on data from the “Household Income
and Labour Dynamics in Australia” (HILDA) survey, we situate, for the first time, intentions
and events in a unified and multidimensional life course framework. We examine the
intention-outcome fertility link across a plurality of life course domains and in a genuine
couple approach. Education, work, and residence are selected as domains closely related to
the family formation process. Results show that pregnancy intentions are often part of a
multidimensional life course plan and that the cross-domain effects are gendered and parity
specific. Moreover, cross-domain events have stronger influence than cross-domain
intentions. A change of residence is directly correlated with a childbirth if it is the outcome
of a previous plan and the couple has already made the transition to parenthood.
Resumption of studies is inversely correlated with the birth of a child irrespective of
whether the event was planned or not by either one of the partners. Finally, a change of job
decreases the chance of having a first child but only if experienced by the female partner
while it decreases the chance of an additional child only if previously planned or
experienced by both partners. Such results confirm the relevance of work-family conflict as
one of the drivers of low fertility and outline the usefulness of a holistic life course approach
in the analysis of reproductive decision-making
The analysis of inequality in life trajectories
No full textThis chapter presents and discusses two complementary statistical approaches for analyzing trajectories in a life course perspective: Sequence analysis and Markovian models. Sequence analysis is an exploratory approach that focuses on the entire trajectory and aims to identify similar patterns among individuals. Markovian models are instead model-based approaches. In a Markovian perspective, life trajectories are seen as the result of a stochastic process in which the probability of occurrence of a particular state or event depends on its history. The goal is then to identify the data generating process beyond the observed sequence of states. We demonstrate the differences and the complementarities of both approaches for studies on the inequality over the life course with an empirical illustration using retrospective data on life trajectories in Switzerland from age 20 to 65 in three life domains: health status, family situation, and working life. The data are collected in 2013 as part of the Swiss Household Panel study
Supplementary Material, Suppl_Materials_JAH-17-299_20171103 – The Heterogeneity of Disability Trajectories in Later Life: Dynamics of Activities of Daily Living Performance Among Nursing Home Residents
No full textSupplementary Material, Suppl_Materials_JAH-17-299_20171103 for The Heterogeneity of Disability Trajectories in Later Life: Dynamics of Activities of Daily Living Performance Among Nursing Home Residents by Danilo Bolano, PhD, André Berchtold, PhD, and Elisabeth Bürge, MPtSc in Journal of Aging and Health</p
From intentions to births:
No full textIn the literature pregnancy intentions are studied in isolation from intentions pertaining to other spheres of life. In this paper, we overcome this gap and investigate birth intentions and subsequent outcomes in a context of multiple life course domains encompassing partnership, education, work and residence. Using longitudinal data from the Household and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), we examine the matching processes of birth intentions and outcomes separately for women and men under the assumption that life courses are gendered. Results show that adults do often have multidimensional plans and that intentions other than childbearing facilitate or hinder the realisation of fertility intentions depending on whether they are expressed by men or women. Planning to move in a new dwelling is functional to the realization of birth intentions if expressed by men while other intentions, like changing job, or resuming studies, hinder childbearing only if they are stated by women. Finally, having a cohabiting relationship is a pre-condition for the realization of childbearing intentions for both men and women. The findings provide a new interpretation of the gap between intended and actual fertility and a new explanation of the fact that birth intentions remain often unrealised
Concentration of critical events over the life course and life satisfaction later in life
No full textCritical events create turning points, disrupt individuals’ life courses, and affect wellbeing. Periods of life densely populated with critical events may translate into an acute resource drain, affecting long-term wellbeing more strongly than if the same events were sparsely distributed. We investigate how the co-occurrence of critical events and their concentration in time influence life satisfaction in later life. To do so, we construct a novel indicator, the Concentration Index, based not only on the number but also on the time lag between occurrences. Using retrospective information on critical events in family, work, health, and residential trajectories in Switzerland, we show that the higher the concentration in time of critical events is, the stronger their negative long-term relation to wellbeing, net of sociodemographic characteristics, the total number of events ever experienced, and the time since the last event. Furthermore, relevant gender and social origin differences emerged with a stronger negative association with wellbeing among men and respondents from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Our work clearly shows that simply counting the number of events gives only a partial and potentially inaccurate measure of the complexity of the life course and its relationship with quality of life. Not only how many events experienced matter but also the spacing between them
Life after death: Widowhood and volunteering gendered pathways among older adults
No full textBACKGROUND Spousal loss is one of the most traumatic events an individual can experience. Studies on behavioral changes before and after this event are scarce. OBJECTIVE This study investigates gender differences in pathways of volunteering before and after transition to widowhood among older adults in the United States. METHODS We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study and estimate fixed effects models with lags and leads to identify pathways of volunteering on a sample of 1,982 adults aged 50 and over. RESULTS The results show a U-shaped pattern with a decline in volunteering activities before the death of the partner and then a slight process of adaptation and recovery. The process is strongly gendered, with women considerably more resilient than men. Whether death was expected or not influences the effect of the partner's death on volunteering, likely due to the pre-death burden of caregiving. Looking at the role of the partner's volunteering before death, we found for both genders, but especially for women, that the odds of volunteering increase (decrease) if the partner was (was not) volunteering (complementarity hypothesis). CONTRIBUTION Given the positive effects of volunteering both for the volunteer and the society as a whole, our findings contribute to the literature highlighting that critical family events may affect participation in society of older people and demonstrating the heterogeneity of the effects, especially in terms of gender differences
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