Physical Activity, Mental Health, and Well‐Being in Very Pre‐Term and Term Born Adolescents: An Individual Participant Data Meta‐Analysis of Two Accelerometry Studies

This study looks at whether physical activity is associated with better mental health and well‐being among very preterm (≤32 weeks) and term born (≥37 weeks) adolescents alike or whether the associations are stronger in either of the groups. It finds that those young people in the study who exercised more had fewer problems with their … Read more

Educational tracking and long-term outcomes by social origin: Seven countries in comparison

This paper uses longitudinal data from seven countries to assess how systems of educational tracking can impact on social mobility. Studies which simply compare comprehensive and tracked systems may be flawed, the research suggests, because of differences in how countries separate students for instructional purposes. The researchers used large-scale longitudinal data from Denmark, England, Finland, … Read more

Job Satisfaction and Sexual Orientation in Britain

This research looks at how satisfied lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals are at work compared with their heterosexual peers. Using British data, the researchers find lower satisfaction levels for bisexual men only and also that policies designed to promote equality for LGB(T) workers have no direct impact on how satisfied workers are. Results showed that … Read more

Sibling influence on family formation: A study of social interaction effects on fertility, marriage, and divorce 

This study looked at whether getting married, having children or getting divorced is likely to influence a sibling to do the same. The analysis on more than 4,000 individuals living in Germany showed that siblings were more likely to become parents or get married if their brother or sister had done the same especially up … Read more

Comparing Groups of Life-Course Sequences Using the Bayesian Information Criterion and the Likelihood-Ratio Test

Authors: Tim Futing Liao, Anette E. Fasang,
Issue: 2021
Themes:

This paper asks how researchers can statistically assess differences in groups of life-course trajectories. The authors address a long-standing inadequacy of social sequence analysis by proposing an adaption of the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and the likelihood-ratio test (LRT) for assessing differences in groups of sequence data. Unlike previous methods, this adaption provides a useful … Read more

No Stratified Effect of Unemployment on Incomes: How the Market, State, and Household Compensate for Income Loss in the United Kingdom and Switzerland

This paper looks at the loss of income in the two years after unemployment in the UK and in Switzerland and finds that while lower income groups are more vulnerable to becoming unemployed, they are not necessarily more vulnerable to its consequences. The researchers used data on more than 35,000 people who took part in … Read more

Dynamic complementarity in skill production: Evidence from genetic endowments and birth order

This study looks at how nature and nurture interact in influencing individuals academic attainment, and finds support for the theory that early life parental inputs increase later gains – especially in those children who have genetic advantages. The researchers used data on a sample of 15,000 siblings, whose genetic and demographic information is stored in … Read more

Gender roles and selection mechanisms across contexts: A comparative analysis of the relationship between unemployment, self-perceived health, and gender

This paper looks at gender differences in the way unemployment impacts on health. It finds on average women suffer less from unemployment than men, and this effect is more pronounced in countries with traditional gender roles than in more egalitarian societies. The researchers wanted to know if the negative effect of unemployment is stronger among … Read more

Compensatory and multiplicative advantages: Social origin, school performance, and stratified higher education enrolment in Finland

This research finds that even in Finland, enrolling in higher education depends on students’ school performance and their parents’ education. The study uses register data from Finland, where students take entrance exams for higher education and where the education system involves both universities and polytechnics, to look at how social origin and school performance is … Read more

Does re-partnering behavior spread among former spouses?

Authors: Zafer Buyukkececi,
Issue: 2020
Themes:

This study investigates whether divorcees who re-partner play a role in their former spouse’s decisions to do the same. The researchers used administrative data from Statistics Netherlands to look at divorcees who remarried or lived with a new partner and the likelihood of their former spouse doing the same soon after and showed this was … Read more