This paper suggests that extensive Nordic family friendly policies designed to support work – family balance and to increase social and gender equality do not achieve the aim of minimising earnings inequalities between men and women and between different family types. Using Finnish register data on 6,621 men and 6,330 women born between 1969 and … Read more
Family Life Courses, Gender, and Mid-Life Earnings
Divorce and Diverging Poverty Rates: A Risk‐and‐Vulnerability Approach
This study offers a new approach to analyzing life course inequalities and applies it to the link between divorce and poverty. Previous research has suggested that divorce drives cumulative inequality between education groups during the life course. Two pathways play a role in this process: the educational gradient in the risk of divorce and the … Read more
Family, Firms, and Fertility: A Study of Social Interaction Effects
This research shows that when an individual has a baby can be directly linked to the fertility decisions not only of their closest family and colleagues but of wider networks. The findings demonstrate for the first time and in a robust way, a clear fertility spillover effect from family to the workplace and vice versa. … Read more
Family Size and the Persistency of Poverty following Divorce: The United States in Comparative Perspective
This paper assesses how the short- and medium-term economic consequences of divorce on women vary by family size. It finds, surprisingly, that having children contributes to a woman’s economic recovery in the medium term. The researchers made use of household survey data in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and Switzerland and advanced modelling techniques to … Read more
The Complexity of Employment & Family Life Courses across 20th Century Europe: An Update
It is a common perception in public debate that lives have become more unstable over the past decades. The authors put this to a broad empirical test using data from 30 European countries to ask, whether family life and employment have indeed become more unstable over time, or if differences across countries remain greater. The … Read more
Why is there an educational gradient in union dissolution? The strain thesis revisited
This study finds that lower educated couples are more likely to separate than their better educated peers, because they experience strain across multiple aspects of their life, including work, finance, social relationships, health and housing. The research shows that lower educated couples are not in themselves more likely to separate, but rather face a range … Read more
Parenthood Wage Gaps across the Life-Course: An Intersectional Comparison by Gender and Race
This paper investigates the wage penalties and premiums for parents and how they play out over their lives depending on how many children they have and their race and gender. The research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) to map parenthood wage gaps for men and women aged 20-45 … Read more
Intersectional inequalities in work and family life courses by gender and race
This paper looks at the different privileges and constraints that men and women face as they juggle the demands of jobs and careers with having a family. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), the researchers examine the gender and race inequalities facing people in the United States and show that, in … Read more
Divorced and Unemployed: the Declining Association between Two Critical Lifecourse States in the UK, 1984-2017
This paper aims to establish the prevalence of people in the UK who are either divorced or separated and also unemployed (DSU). It also investigates whether education level or gender influences the likelihood of an individual being part of this sub-group of the population. Using data covering the period 1984-2017 from large-scale national surveys in … Read more
Long-term changes in married couples’ labor supply and taxes: Evidence from the US and Europe since the 1980s
This study uses large-scale survey data from Europe and the United States to ask what factors have affected decisions made by married couples about whether to work, and for how many hours. It finds income tax can influence women to work more hours. The researchers analysed data from the European Labour Force Survey and the … Read more