Marcel Raab

GlobalIndex A Sociological Approach to Globalization Measurement

This article suggests a multidimensional globalization measure, encompassing economic, (socio)technological, cultural and political dimensions of global change. This measure builds on previous work...This article suggests a multidimensional globalization measure, encompassing economic, (socio)technological, cultural and political dimensions of global change. This measure builds on previous work by Dreher, Lockwood and Redoano, the OECD and Kearney, but extends it by additional dimensions and indicators that represent central facets of a genuine sociological concept of globalization. The article first describes in detail the multidimensional nature of the globalization process and then develops an overall sociological index of globalization, which the authors call GlobalIndex. This index covers the development of globalization in 97 different countries from 1970 to 2002. Using the GlobalIndex, the authors describe the development of globalization on a worldwide scale as well as for different country contexts. Finally, they include the GlobalIndex as an explanatory variable in two micro-level longitudinal analyses of labour market transitions during the early career period in Germany and the UK.

Beyond transmission: intergenerational patterns of family formation among middle-class American families.

Research about parental effects on family behavior focuses on intergenerational transmission: that is, whether children show the same family behavior as their parents. This focus potentially overemphasizes similarity and obscures heterogeneity in parental effects on family behavior. In this study, we make two contributions. First, instead of focusing on isolated focal events, we conceptualize parents’ and their children’s family formation holistically as the process of union formation and childbearing between ages 15 and 40. We then discuss mechanisms likely to shape these intergenerational patterns. Second, beyond estimating average transmission effects, we innovatively apply multichannel sequence analysis to dyadic sequence data on middle-class American families from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG; N = 461 parent-child dyads). The results show three salient intergenerational family formation patterns among this population: a strong transmission, a moderated transmission, and an intergenerational contrast pattern. We examine what determines parents’ and children’s likelihood to sort into a specific intergenerational pattern. For middle-class American families, educational upward mobility is a strong predictor of moderated intergenerational transmission, whereas close emotional bonds between parents and children foster strong intergenerational transmission. We conclude that intergenerational patterns of family formation are generated at the intersection of macro-structural change and family internal psychological dynamics.

The temporal structure of intergenerational exchange: A within-family analysis of parent–child reciprocity

Previous studies of parent-child reciprocity have focused either on the long term (generalized exchange over the life course) or on the short term (concurrent exchange in later life). The purpose of this research was to investigate the linkage between both temporal patterns of reciprocity within an integrative conceptual framework. We assessed whether long-term and short-term reciprocity operated as interdependent mechanisms that initially selected and subsequently relieved intergenerational caregiving relationships. We used data from the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old study (AHEAD) provided by frail, single-living parents of at least two children (N=1010 respondents comprising 3768 parent-child dyads). Fixed-effects conditional logit models estimated between-sibling differences in assistance provided to parents, measured by instrumental help (i.e., assistance with IADLs) and hands-on care (i.e., assistance with ADLs). Key predictors were two measures of financial transfers given to children referring to longer and shorter recall periods. Receiving earlier and current financial transfers increased adult childrens propensity to support their parents in later life. The effect of earlier transfers pertained to help rather than care whereas the reverse was true for the effect of current transfers. We found no evidence for a linkage between long-term and short-term reciprocity. Overall, the results indicate that adult children might balance long-term support accounts relative to their siblings, suggesting an intra-generational orientation on equity.

Sibling Similarity in Family Formation

Sibling studies have been widely used to analyze the impact of family background on socioeconomic and, to a lesser extent, demographic outcomes. We contribute to this literature with a novel research design that combines sibling comparisons and sequence analysis to analyze longitudinal family-formation trajectories of siblings and unrelated persons. This allows us to scrutinize in a more rigorous way whether sibling similarity exists in family-formation trajectories and whether siblings’ shared background characteristics, such as parental education and early childhood family structure, can account for similarity in family formation. We use Finnish register data from 1987 through 2007 to construct longitudinal family-formation trajectories in young adulthood for siblings and unrelated dyads (N = 14,257 dyads). Findings show that family formation is moderately but significantly more similar for siblings than for unrelated dyads, also after controlling for crucial parental background characteristics. Shared parental background characteristics add surprisingly little to account for sibling similarity in family formation. Instead, gender and the respondents’ own education are more decisive forces in the stratification of family formation. Yet, family internal dynamics seem to reinforce this stratification such that siblings have a higher probability to experience similar family-formation patterns. In particular, patterns that correspond with economic disadvantage are concentrated within families. This is in line with a growing body of research highlighting the importance of family structure in the reproduction of social inequality.

Kurzzeitreziprozität in späten Eltern-Kind-Beziehungen

In westlichen Gesellschaften unterstutzen Eltern ihre Kinder bis ins hohe Alter mit instrumentellen und vor allem mit finanziellen Transfers. Umgekehrt helfen erwachsene Kinder ihren Eltern in erster Linie durch instrumentelle Leistungen. Diese Hilfe reicht von einfachen Tatigkeiten im Haushalt bis hin zu zeitintensiver Pflege im Alter (Rossi und Rossi 1990). Austauschmuster in spaten Eltern- Kind-Beziehungen bestehen somit uberwiegend aus „abwarts“ gerichteten finanziellen Transfers und instrumentellen Hilfen, die in der Generationenlinie „aufwarts“ verlaufen (Soldo und Hill 1993).

GlobalIndex – Ein soziologischer Ansatz zur Messung von Globalisierung

Der Prozess der Globalisierung zahlt zweifelsohne zu den in jungerer Vergangenheit meist diskutierten Gegenstandsbereichen in den Sozialwissenschaften. Trotz des wachsenden thematischen Interesses sind jedoch Ansatze zur quantitativen Erfassung des Globalisierungsprozesses bislang vage oder konzentrieren sich nur einseitig auf die Erfassung der okonomischen Komponente der Globalisierung. Bislang fehlt somit ein adaquates sozialwissenschaftliches Messinstrument, mittels dessen sich Globalisierungsprozesse quantitativ erfassen und z. B. als erklarende Variable in die Analyse von Befragungsdaten integrieren lassen.