Henriette Engelhardt

Fertility and women´s employment reconsidered: A macro-level time-series analysis for developed countries, 1960-2000

This paper examines causality and parameter instability in the long-run relationship between fertility and womens employment. This is done by a cross-national comparison of macro-level time-series data from 1960 to 2000 for France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. By applying vector error correction models (a combination of Granger-causality tests with recent econometric time-series techniques) we find causality in both directions. This finding is consistent with simultaneous movements of both variables brought about by common exogenous factors such as social norms, social institutions, financial incentives, and the availability and acceptability of contraception. We find a negative and significant correlation until about the mid-1970s and an insignificant or weaker negative correlation afterwards. This result is consistent with a recent hypothesis in the demographic literature according to which changes in the institutional context, such as changes in childcare availability and attitudes towards working mothers, might have reduced the incompatibility between child-rearing and the employment of women.

The social inheritance of divorce : Effects of parent's family type in postwar Germany

The social inheritance of divorce is one factor contributing to the upward trend in marriage dissolution rates during the last few decades. Several studies confirm the transmission hypothesis for U.S. marriages. We investigate the intergenerational transmission of divorce risk among German first marriages using multivariate event-history techniques. Our data are from the 7,200 respondents of the German Family Survey. The historical circumstances of postwar Germany allow a comparison between families dissolved by war and families dissolved by divorce. Respondents whose parental families dissolved by the death of a parent have only slightly higher divorce risks than respondents who grew up in two-parent families. There is, however, a large gap in marital instability for respondents from divorced-parent families compared with respondents from two-parent families and families with a widowed parent. Hence, the inheritance of divorce cannot be explained simply by the absence ofa parent. The data suggest that differences in personal investments in the marriage partnership may partially explain the transmission effect

Do Cross-National Differences in the Costs of Children Generate Cross-National Differences in Fertility Rates?

Parity-specific probabilities of having a next birth are estimated from national fertility data and are compared with nation-specific costs of having children as measured by time-budget data, by attitude data from the International Social Survey Program, and by panel data on labor earnings and standard of living changes following a birth. We focus on five countries (the United States, the former West Germany, Denmark, Italy, and the United Kingdom), whose fertility rates span the observed fertility range in the contemporary industrialized world and whose social welfare and family policies span the conceptual space of standard welfare-state typologies. Definitive conclusions are difficult because of the multiple dimensions on which child costs can be measured, the possibility that child costs affect both the quantum and the tempo of fertility, the relatively small fertility differences across industrialized nations, and the inherent small-N problem resulting from nation-level comparisons. Empirical analysis, however, supports the assertion that institutionally driven child costs affect the fertility patterns of industrialized nations.

Children’s impact on the mental health of their older mothers and fathers: findings from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

The relation between social support and mental health has been thoroughly researched and structural characteristics of the social network have been widely recognised as being an important component of social support. The aim of this paper is to clarify the association between children and depressive mood states of their older parents. Based on international comparative data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe we analysed how the number of children, their proximity and the frequency of contact between older parents and their children are associated with the mental health of older people, using the EURO-D index. Our results indicate a positive association of children and depressive mood since childless men and women report more depressive symptoms. Moreover, few contacts with children were associated with an increased number of depressive symptoms. The family status was related to mental health as well: older men and women living with a spouse or partner had the lowest levels of depression. Interestingly, the presence of a spouse or partner was more relevant for the mental health of older people than the presence of, or contact with, their children.

Social involvement, behavioural risks and cognitive functioning among older people

ABSTRACT This study analyses the relationships between cognitive performance, social participation and behavioural risks, taking into account age and educational attainment. We examine individual data for 11 European countries and Israel from the first wave of the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The stochastic frontier approach methodology enables us to identify different sources of plasticity on cognitive functioning while taking into account age-related decline in cognitive performance. Several social participation variables were examined: employment status, attending educational courses, doing voluntary or charity work, providing help to family, friends or neighbours, participating in sports, social or other clubs, in a religious organisation and in a political or community organisation, and we controlled for age, education, income, physical activity, body-mass index, smoking and drinking. In the pooled sample, the results clearly show that all kinds of social involvement enhance cognitive functions, in particular in work. Moreover, behavioural risks such as physical inactivity, obesity, smoking or drinking were clearly detrimental to cognitive performance. Models for men and women were run separately. For both genders, all social involvement indicators associated with better cognitive performance. The results varied by countries, however, particularly the signs of the associations with a number of indicators of social involvement and behavioural risks.

Estimating Causal Effects With Matching Methods in the Presence and Absence of Bias Cancellation

This article explores the implications of bias cancellation on the estimate of average treatment effects using ordinary least squares (OLS) and Rubin-style matching methods. Bias cancellation (offsetting biases at high and low propensities for treatment in estimates of treatment effects that are uncorrected for nonrandom selection) has been observed when job training is the treatment variable and earnings is the outcome variable. Contrary to published assertions in the literature, bias cancellation is not explainable in terms of the standard selection model, which assumes a symmetric distribution for the errors in the structural and assignment equations. A substantive rationale for bias cancellation is offered, which conceptualizes bias cancellation as the result of a mixture process based on two distinct individual-level decision-making models. While the general properties are unknown, the existence of bias cancellation appears to reduce the average bias in both OLS and matching methods relative to the symmetric distribution case.

Die soziale Vererbung des Scheidungsrisikos

Zusammenfassung Die soziale ‘Vererbung’ des Ehescheidungsrisikos ist ein Faktor zur Erklärung der Dynamik der Aufwärtsentwicklung des Scheidungsrisikos in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten. Die Existenz eines derartigen Effekts konnte bisher in mehreren Studien mit US-amerikanischen Daten nachgewiesen werden. In dieser Untersuchung prüfen wir erstmals die Transmissionshypothese auf der Grundlage der Daten des deutschen Familiensurveys. Sowohl bei den jüngeren als auch bei den älteren Eheschließungskohorten ist ein prägnanter Effekt der sozialen Vererbung des Scheidungsrisikos erkennbar. Überraschenderweise zeigt sich aber eine starke Differenz im Ausmaß des Transmissionseffekts zwischen Frauen und Männern. Söhne geschiedener Eltern haben in ihrer eigenen Ehe noch ein weitaus höheres Scheidungsrisiko als Töchter aus ‘Scheidungsfamilien’. Ferner ist nicht die Unvollständigkeit der Herkunftsfamilie an sich entscheidend für die Erhöhung des Ehescheidungsrisikos der nachfolgenden Generation, sondern der Grund der Familienauflösung durch Ehescheidung versus Verwitwung. Damit ist der Transmissionseffekt durch die Absenkung des Lebensstandards in unvollständigen Familien allein nicht zu erklären.

The influence of offspring's sex and age at parents’ divorce on the intergenerational transmission of divorce, Norwegian first marriages 1980–2003

Whether a couple remain married or divorce has repeatedly been shown to be of importance for the marital stability of their children. This paper addresses the related question of whether the intergenerational transmission of divorce is contingent on the age at which parents divorced and the sex of the spouse who experienced the parents’ divorce. Using a population-wide data-set on Norwegian first marriages followed from 1980 to 2003, we find that the intergenerational transmission hypothesis holds also for Norway, that this relationship is stronger for women than for men, and that there is a negative age gradient in the transmission effect for women. The experience of multiple family transitions, such as a parents remarriage or a second divorce, does not affect couples’ divorce risk.

Causal Analysis in Population Studies

An important hallmark of empirical research in population studies and demography has traditionally been a focus on careful description of population trends and changes using representative microor large-scale macro-data. For example, much effort has been devoted to describing the trends and variations in the core demographic processes – fertility, mortality and migration – and how the size and structure of a population are affected by these underlying processes. A core aspect of demographic methods therefore has been on the construction of vital rates, life-course measures of the tempo and quantum of demographic events, life table analysis and its extension to multi-state processes, and the decomposition of population differences in terms of rates and proportions (Vaupel 2001). Building on the methods and insights of these descriptive analyses, demographers have also developed sophisticated means for population projections (e.g. Lutz et al. 1999) and for investigating the relationships between mortality, fertility and migration in stable populations (e.g. Preston et al. 2001). In recent years, however, the field of population studies has grown increasingly diverse. While maintaining its traditional focus on formal demography (e.g. Feichtinger 1979), the discipline has strengthened its connections to other fields of science. As a result, demographers are increasingly adopting theories, concepts, and methods from sociology, economics, biology, medicine, anthropology, ecology, agriculture, geography, as well as mathematics, statistics, and econometrics, and demographic research increasingly addresses topics or questions that used to be within the domain of other disciplines. With this broadening of view, a central aim of many research papers in population studies and demography is now to explain cause-effect relationships among variables or events. That is, demographic research is increasingly trying to address the causal mechanisms generating trends and variation in the core demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration, and demographers are increasingly

Discrimination in the Labor Market: A Gender Perspective

The Swiss labor market is characterised by many differences between men’s and women’s situations. These include income, type and rate of participation, positions in hierarchies and so on. In this section, the most remarkable differences will be described.