Irena E. Kotowska

The role of fixed-term contracts at labour market entry in Poland: stepping stones, screening devices, traps or search subsidies?

Poland has become an interesting outlier in Europe in terms of employment flexibility, with an extremely high incidence of fixed-term contracts, particularly at labour market entry. In this article, detailed retrospective data from the Polish School Leavers Survey are used to analyse the dynamics of entry and exit from fixed-term contracts. The results show that neither firm-based vocational training nor diplomas from more selective tertiary education institutions provide graduates better access to secure entry positions. Regarding exit dynamics, transition patterns from fixed-term contracts into unemployment suggest that the timing of exits often coincides with the date of becoming eligible to collect unemployment benefits. The results also imply that, in Poland, fixed-term contracts might serve employers by helping them to identify the best workers.

Decreasing birth rates in Europe: reasons and remedies

This article provides an overall survey of Europe’s demographic patterns and statistics. It identifies economic progress, institutional modernisation, and development of the welfare state as factors contributing to fertility shifts and particularly to postponement of childbearing. The authors suggest Europe needs policies aimed at demographic renewal which focus first on diminishing direct costs borne by both parents and second, on diminishing indirect costs born predominantly by women. If Europe can effect the necessary paradigm shifts in gender roles and society it will prepare the way for holistic solutions.

Reconciliation of Work and Family Within Different Institutional Settings

The IPPAS data are used to analyse work-family life arrangements from two perspectives: a desirable increase in female employment, and a highly-desirable rise in fertility. The practised and preferred work-family arrangements are studied in terms of the family-partnership models by employment patterns, with special emphasis being placed on institutional settings. The descriptive analysis is combined with the multinomial logit models, formulated for couples’ choices of family-partnership models, as well as for fertility intentions.

Activating Older Workers: Policies Versus Opinions and Expectations

The main aim of the article is to confront older-worker oriented policies, as well as reforms in pension systems in Europe, with individual preferences and expectations towards transition to retirement, economic activity after retirement and governmental policies aimed at making pension systems sustainable. This comparative analysis is supplemented with experts’ views on active ageing (obtained in the Delphi study). Recent trends in labour force participation of persons aged 55+ in Europe are examined. Special emphasis is placed on retirement policies and on pension system reforms. Comparative analyses of individuals’ opinions on retirement age, economic activity of the elderly and transition to retirement, as well as on changes in the pension system, are carried out using descriptive methods and logistic regression models in which basic characteristics of respondents such as age, sex and education were taken into account. Respondents’ expectations and preferences are compared both with experts’ views, and with policies implemented in the countries under study.

The New Roles of Men and Women and Implications for Families and Societies

This keynote chapter presents main research findings on new gender roles and their implications for families and societies. It first depicts the development of family forms in Europe over the past fifty years, with a focus on increasingly diverse family biographies and the changes in the roles of women and men. It highlights that changes in women’s role have been more comprehensive, whereas in most countries the transformation of the male role has barely started. Next, views in contemporary scholarship on the interplay between the increasing family complexity and gender role changes are addressed. A detailed discussion of new challenges of transitions in and organization of family life follows, with a focus on four main topics: women’s new role and the implications for family dynamics, the gendered transition to parenthood, new gender roles in doing families, and coping strategies in family and work reconciliation under conditions of uncertainty and precariousness and impacts on fertility. A brief conclusion ends this chapter.

Equality of Retirement Benefits Received by Men and Women in Selected European Countries: Childbearing and Future Benefits

This research report seeks to answer the question of whether old-age benefit rules for women could be altered with the aim not only of ensuring better benefits for older women but also of stimulating fertility. To address this question, a micro-simulation model has been developed. The input data for the model has been drawn from labour force survey data on employment patterns by age, gender, education, numbers of children, variations in the timing of caring for children and wage profiles for five countries: Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. Future retirement benefits are simulated under three variants: variant I uses country-specific labour market data and old-age pension systems; variant II makes use of German labour market data and country-specific old-age pension systems; and finally, variant III refers to country-specific labour market data and the Polish defined-contribution system. Each simulation variant entails four scenarios, which refer to the number of children and the timing of childcare. The simulations show that the effects of differences in old-age systems for retirement benefits are relatively small and that what really matters is the labour market structure, which reflects the impact of children on employment patterns. Therefore, the report concludes that policies aimed at reducing the negative consequences children have on the labour market participation of mothers are recommended for increasing their old-age pensions. This approach would also help to diminish work–family tensions, which in turn could facilitate positive decisions about having children.