Programme

Despite achieving formal gender equality, women and men often gravitate towards distinct educational and occupational paths, particularly along the people-things dimension. Past research underscores the influence of gendered interests, with women preferring socially interactive roles and men leaning towards fields involving technological aspects. However, the specific characteristics associated with ""people"" and ""things"" that drive these choices remain unclear (e.g., programming versus construction of machines). Additionally, it is uncertain whether individuals' aversions to characteristics traditionally associated with the opposite sex can be altered through interventions such as introducing preparation courses in STEM fields.
To answer these questions, we conduct three large-scale choice experiments with a representative group of Swiss high school students (N ~ 5000). We present hypothetical fields and related occupations to students, which permits us to elicit preferences in a counterfactual world, in which e.g., math-heavy fields are characterised by a non-competitive environment. By isolating preferences for career attributes typically confounded with other attributes (e.g., communal tasks with women), we can independently identify the importance of characteristics and test multiple theories simultaneously. Therefore, our study contributes to previous research by a) developing a schema for translating the people-things dimension into specific skills and tasks, b) identifying specific things/people characteristics driving gendered interests, and c) examining the potential of certain career attributes to reduce aversion towards fields dominated by the opposite sex. Thus, our findings have implications for how degrees can be designed, and jobs be advertised to attract more opposite-sex candidates.

Research has shown that the main reason for the early gender wage gap (GWG) among higher education (HE) graduates at the beginning of their careers is the gender-specific choice of field of study. However, a substantial  part of the GWG remains unexplained. We examine whether field of study per se matters by considering the skills acquired in HE. More specifically, we investigate whether returns to skills differ by gender by looking at graduates' skill confidence. Thanks to a distinctive and rich data set on HE graduates and their early career decisions, the DZHW Graduate Panel, we can explore whether and how skills affect the GWG. First results show that different types of skills and levels of skill confidence differ in their relevance for labor market outcomes. Using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we find that analytical skills, rather than the much-discussed social skills, explain a small but significant part of the early GWG. Nevertheless, fields of study remain the most important explanatory factor. Therefore, we plan to further exploit a negative labor market shock to increase the robustness of our analyses. Our findings shed light on the interplay between gender, major choice, and labor market outcomes, providing further information to encourage young women to enter non-stereotypical study fields. Moreover, they suggest that policy efforts to close the early GWG should not be limited to altering preferences that are difficult to change, but that it may also be important to consider skills and confidence when thinking about gender equality in the labor market.

This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of gender disparities in mathematics achievement using PISA data from 2000 to 2022. It challenges the existing narrative of minimal average differences in math achievement between boys and girls, uncovering a complex pattern of gender gaps that vary significantly across countries. The primary focus is on examining these differences across the entire test score distribution (1st to 99th percentile) and categorizing countries into clusters based on the observed patterns. Additionally, the study explores the stability of these gender gap patterns and their correlations with macro indicators like gender equality and economic prosperity.
The methodological approach includes quantile regression for a detailed analysis of gender gaps across achievement percentiles, followed by cluster analysis of the gender gap data. This approach allows for the identification of temporal changes and diverse patterns in gender gaps. Furthermore, the study employs machine learning algorithms, particularly random forests, to investigate the relationship between gender gaps and macro indicators such as the Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This innovative method aims to reveal potential non-linear relationships and complex socio-economic interactions.
Preliminary results show dynamic variations in gender gaps, with countries shifting cluster membership over time. These findings highlight the intricate relationship between gender disparities in mathematics and broader macro factors, offering new perspectives on educational inequalities. The study emphasizes the need for nuanced policy interventions and contributes significantly to the discourse on gender equality in education.

The aim of this paper is to investigates the determinants of gender differences persistence within high-stakes university exams. Existing research suggests that female students exhibit greater self-discipline and effort in non-incentivized conditions and low-stakes tests, independently of the area of study. However, whether this same gender gap remains in high-stake university exams of different study areas, where real incentives and stereotype threats are presents, remains untested.  To address this gap, the study explores gender differences in test-taking persistence during real university exams, using data from Moodle of the online exams that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crucially for the study, this platform allows for the randomization of question order during the administration of the test to the students, which allows us to decompose test performance into a cognitive and non-cognitive component (persistence). Additionally, the access to the university administrative data from the university, allows to assess gender effects on test performance and persistence, conditional on program or group characteristics, offering insights that could inform university policies.

The link between parental background characteristics and children's educational outcomes has been extensively studied in social sciences by starting from the offspring’s perspective and linking them back to their parents. By focusing only on parent-child pairs, this line of research ignored that the educational stratification of a whole generation of potential parents shapes the educational distribution of the offspring generation by educationally stratified demographic behaviour such as mating patterns and fertility. To study intergenerational educational reproduction including both, social and demographic characteristics and their interdependences we apply a prospective approach. Thereby, we disentangle the relative importance of assortative mating, educationally stratified fertility, and direct educational inheritance in the process of intergenerational educational reproduction of women born 1930-1950 across 12 European countries. Our results show clear cross-country variation of inequality of educational opportunity with the largest inequalities in Poland and Romania and the lowest in Russia and Sweden. Educationally stratified fertility plays a negligible role in shaping educational differences in all countries except Austria and Poland, where the negative fertility gradient reinforces the production of low-educated children and reduces the production of high-educated children. Assortative mating essentially influences educational reproduction in that the prevalence of educationally homogamous couples intensifies the reproduction of educational (dis)advantages in all countries. Our results underline the importance of demographic factors in the study of intergenerational educational reproduction.

Based on classical measures of intergenerational correlations of socioeconomic status, research tends to show a weaker influence of parental SES within immigrant families than within native-born families. Yet, this literature is limited in two ways: 1) existing studies only capture observed SES transmissions, not the total effect of family background, and 2) little is known about differences in mother’s and father’s relative influence on their children’s outcomes across migration status. Using sibling correlation and decomposition measures on the new large-scale TeO2 survey in France, we show that, while the effect of observed parental SES on children’s educational attainment is indeed weaker in immigrant families, the total effect of family background (both observed and unobserved) is not. We also show that the weaker intergenerational effect of parental SES in immigrant families is largely due to the weaker influence of maternal SES. Indeed, while the relative contribution of mothers’ SES is equal to or greater than that of fathers in native-born families, the reverse is true in immigrant families in which father’s SES matter more. The gradual erosion of these specificities for immigrants’ grandchildren (third generation), in line with theoretical expectations from the neo-classical framework of immigrant assimilation. We discuss the specific pathways of social reproduction in immigrant families implied by these results.

There is extensive literature on intergenerational mobility in education, including a burgeoning literature on the transition to PhD. However, less is known about the socioeconomic diversity among academic faculty. In this paper, we investigate the social origins of academic faculty in a Scandinavian welfare state using unique register data. Following entire birth cohorts born from 1945 to 1975 in Norway, we find large differences in the likelihood of becoming faculty members by parental education, earnings, and class background. Furthermore, despite the considerable educational expansion, the selectivity of academic faculty has been relatively stable over birth cohorts born across a thirty-year period. However, while the likelihood of becoming a faculty member varies widely depending on social origins, sorting into faculty positions seems to be explained entirely by differences in obtaining a PhD. Once we compare individuals with PhD educations, social origins do not seem to constitute an additional barrier to becoming a faculty member.

This study investigates the impact of institutional admission restrictions on social class-based disparities in post-secondary education transitions in Germany. The research addresses a gap by examining the role of admission systems in reinforcing social inequality and compares it with the usually studied characteristics informing educational decision-making. Using representative survey data from future high-school graduates in Germany (2008, 2012, and 2015), supplemented with administrative data on admission restrictions for all degree programs, the proposed study explores how diversion from higher education varies among students with different social class backgrounds. The analysis integrates competition and diversion hypotheses to understand the extent and functioning of diversion in post-secondary transitions in Germany. Our empirical modeling strategies employ logistic regression models and KHB as well as Fairly decomposition methods to quantify class differentials in diversion and their respective individual-level and institutional drivers. A simple counterfactual design draws on these findings to quantify the potential consequences of changes in admission restrictions. Initial findings reveal notable disparities in students' trajectories, highlighting the need for further investigation into the interplay of social class, attitudes, and admission systems in shaping educational outcomes.

Children’s developmental processes are not always linear. During the childhood period, children usually experience ups and downs in their skills, and how parents respond to these changes can crucially condition the subsequent process of development of the children. This paper examines (1) how children’s developmental declines impact the level of cognitive stimulation implemented by the mothers, and (2) whether these effects vary by socioeconomic groups. Using longitudinal NLSY79-CYA data from the US, I implement a series of two-way fixed effects and fixed effects contextual models. Findings show that mothers respond negatively to the declines in their children’s mathematical skills by decreasing their levels of cognitive stimulation. This is particularly evident among mothers with low levels of education or those at the bottom part of the income distribution. All in all, this evidence suggests that mothers reinforce existing disadvantages by decreasing their cognitive stimulation when their children show developmental declines and that this mechanism could be responsible for broadening the developmental gap between children from low- and high- socioeconomic backgrounds.

Early childhood is a critical period for the reproduction of social inequality. While a growing literature is exploring the influence of parental socioeconomic background, less is known about the effect of precarious jobs. Nonetheless, employment uncertainty has become part of many workers’ trajectories in post-Fordist societies. We investigate the link between household employment uncertainty (HEU), including temporary work and unemployment, and children’s cognitive skills, socio-emotional adjustment, and health. We leverage the first four waves of the French Longitudinal Study of Children (ELFE), a birth cohort that follows 18.000 children born in 2011. To assess the patterns of association, we use OLS and Linear probability model. The accumulation within the household and the persistence of HEU over time are associated with lower cognitive skills (up to -0.3 SD) in children at ages two and three and a half. While results for socio-emotional adjustment are less robust, child physical health appears not to be correlated with HEU, hinting at the potential mitigating role of a comprehensive healthcare system. Moreover, we set up a counterfactual mediation analysis to explore the mechanisms that may explain this association, and we test the robustness of the results to the birth of a sibling as a possible post-treatment confounder of the mediator-outcome link, using the regression-with-residual method. In alignment with the family investment model and the family stress model, income and parental investment in stimulating activities mediate the effect on cognitive skills, whereas parental stress mediates the effect on socio-emotional adjustment. The mediation appears to be driven by mothers.

Objective: This study developed a typology of children’s use of ICT (information and communication technologies) in middle childhood, investigated the association of ICT use types with parental education and explored which family-level variables contributed to unequal ICT utilization.
Background: In the television era, high parental socioeconomic status (SES) correlated with reduced screen time among children, yet little is understood about present-day socioeconomic disparities in children's ICT use, particularly in middle childhood. The shift to contemporary mobile and interactive ICT introduced new opportunities for children’s skill- and status-enhancing use of ICT, posing unclear theoretical implications.
Method: Using parent survey data from Switzerland collected in 2022 (n = 2,485), latent class analysis was performed on indicators of children’s ICT use, covering the use intensity of different activities and devices. Children’s latent class membership was then related to different predictors.
Results: Higher parental education was associated with two different use types: first, an education-centered, relatively broad use of ICT, and second, the use of almost no ICT. Children of less educated parents were more likely to use ICT heavily.
Conclusion: In a regional context with near-universal ICT access, the classical socioeconomic digital divide was reversed. Reconciling two diverging theory-driven propositions – that high parental SES should be associated with generally low ICT use but high educational ICT use – the findings uncovered the heterogeneity of parental responses to the ambiguities associated with children’s use of modern ICT.

Increased maternal employment and modernised labour market have altered the physical and psychological challenges for mothers, yet, evidence on the role of job demands for child development remains limited.
This paper provides initial evidence whether and how maternal job demands are associated with early child development in Germany. Drawing on theories on early dynamic skill production, status attainment, time-availability and work-family conflict, we formulate contrasting hypotheses on the link between higher job strain and child development as well as its mediators and moderators. 
We utilize longitudinal data from the Newborn Cohort of the National Educational Panel Study, and its link with administrative records on mothers’ employment biographies (NEPS-SC1-ADIAB, person-years ≈ 5300) and the BIBB/BAuA-job-exposure matrix, measuring occupational physical and psychosocial work strain. We examine cognitive as well as non-cognitive child development during the first tenyears after birth using linear regressions, thereby exploring potential mediating factors such as parent-child interaction and quality. Finally, we exploit occupational changes in our longitudinal data and assess the impact of altered job demands on child development over time using fixed-effects models.
First results suggest relevant associations between children’s skill formation and mother’s job demands across various ages that remain robust to relevant control variables. As educational and financial resources mostly explain the observed associations, our results suggest few direct links between occupational job strain and skill formation. Instead, the results highlight the importance of job demands in shaping family life and parenting, thus contributing to the intergenerational transmission of inequalities early in life.

Social inequality, a key theme in sociology, transcends mere material aspects. Traditional scholarly emphasis on individual or national factors often overlooks the intricate dynamics at the meso-level within social relationships. Recent perspectives shed light on how individuals extrapolate national distributional conditions from their social contexts, utilizing mechanisms such as social sampling. Despite the richness of these ideas, empirical validation remains very scarce and reduced to only some specific national contexts. This study addresses this empirical gap by investigating the impact of socioeconomic heterogeneity within individuals' social environments on their perceptions and explanations of contemporary societal inequality.Drawing on data from the 2019 ISSP Module of Social Inequality across 23 countries, the research addresses the question: To what extent does socioeconomic heterogeneity within social environments impact perceptions and explanations of inequality? Three hypotheses are examined: higher socioeconomic heterogeneity correlates with increased perception of inequality (H1), a rise in structuralist explanations (H2), and a decrease in individualist explanations (H3). Utilizing multilevel regression models with meticulous individual variable controls, the study also explores the interplay between socioeconomic heterogeneity and individuals' objective positions.
Preliminary results reveal a compelling narrative: heightened socioeconomic heterogeneity corresponds to increased perception of inequality, coupled with simultaneous rises in both structuralist and individualist explanations. These findings underscore the crucial role of diverse social environments not only in shaping awareness of inequality but also in unraveling the intricate web of determining factors. Despite the richness of insights, empirical validation remains limited, emphasizing the need for further research in this evolving field.

European societies have been experiencing growing income and wealth inequalities over the past few decades. Distributive justice theory argues that subjective justice evaluations of these outcomes are key elements that connect economic inequality to its social consequences. In studying justice accounts of inequality, past research has focused chiefly on single evaluations and has, therefore, failed to consider the multidimensionality of justice. When individuals evaluate economic inequality, they assess their own and others' situations, considering various components of economic inequality. We argue that capturing a comprehensive sense of justice about economic inequalities requires jointly considering a variety of evaluations. We rely on the European Social Survey with multiple justice evaluations of income and wealth to close this gap. Using latent class analysis, we identify four types of justice profiles among the active working population in Europe: critics, altruists, the deprived, and status-quo supporters. These groups differ in whether and where they evaluate injustice in income and wealth. Most respondents are either critics who perceive injustice in all dimensions or altruists who assess their own situation as just but the societal income and wealth differences as unjust. Our results also show that the profiles map well with previous scholarship on distributive justice and redistribution preferences, as profile membership is systematically related to the social position of workers in Europe and their demand for redistribution.

The theoretical proposition that social networks structure the political relevance of class has seldom been scrutinized on a large cross-national scale. In this comparative study, we investigate how the class profile of the personal network shapes individual attitudes towards redistribution across 32 countries. Challenging the common notion that the welfare state fosters cross-class consensus, our overarching comparative hypothesis is that more extensive welfare state institutions amplify class divides in preferences for redistribution, partially channeled through social networks. Using multilevel modelling and data from the ISSP 2017 Social Networks and Resources module, we find that having more family, friends and acquaintances in upper-middle class positions is associated with lower support for redistribution, while having social ties to working-class positions correlate with higher support for redistribution. Moreover, both an individual’s own class location and the class profile of their personal network contribute to class divides in attitudes towards redistribution being more pronounced in countries with more extensive welfare states. The study expands the picture of how political divisions over economic redistribution stem from class positions, and suggests that social networks and welfare state institutions interact in shaping (cross-national variation in) the magnitude of the class cleavage within the realm of redistributive policy.

The escalating economic inequality and the current sanitary crisis have threatened social solidarity among citizens in the European societies as well as in other parts of the globe. However, these consequences have been unevenly experienced across the social structure where the upper and intermediate classes, benefiting from privileged access to social resources, have shown resilience. Conversely, working-class families have faced deteriorating material conditions, leading to a heightened sense of marginalization and increasing the demand for welfare support. Particularly, social resources through network ties have been suggested to have a direct link with an individual's welfare through instrumental and expressive outcomes, such as providing information or help in moments of need. Consequently, it has been argued that social isolation not only plays a role in terms of social resources, but higher levels of segregation can bolster opinions, suggesting that being isolated from other social classes can polarise attitudes mainly in the working and upper-middle classes. In this regard, based on the ISSP 2017 -  Social Networks (N=35610),  multilevel estimations suggest that the influence of network homogeneity is conditional to social class, where the working and intermediate classes with high homogeneous networks hold higher redistributive preferences than the upper classes. Additionally, income inequality has been shown to decrease the polarizing effect of network segregation, mainly among the upper classes, when overall inequality is high. In sum, this study highlights the role of both social class and network segregation together to understand redistributive preferences, as well as their implications for policies and cohesion.

Historically, researchers and policymakers alike recognized the risk of poverty among large families, but family size is often neglected in the contemporary literature. This article revives an examination of the connections between family size and poverty risk for children with a focus on Germany. We take a child-centred perspective by analysing a sample of 13–14 year-old children from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).
First, we provide a detailed overview of the welfare and tax policies aimed at large families in Germany. Next, we estimate the poverty risk and prevalence for children in large families (looking at families with 3+ and 4+ children). Finally, we discuss how the policy and socio-economic context interacts with the risk of poverty. We identify that the means-tested social assistance scheme penalizes large families, while the child benefit would only acknowledge higher need of middle-income families with three or more children.

This study investigates the dynamics of long-term poverty in Belgium by employing a novel multi-dataset approach that combines census, Belgian national demographic statistics, tax register data, and SILC data. To extract deeper insights from the tax register, we develop a profiling strategy based on individuals' backgrounds, income attributes, and additional information from SILC and other sources. By leveraging the longitudinal continuity of the tax register (2007-2018) and SILC's comprehensive demographic and socioeconomic data, we construct detailed profiles that capture the multifaceted nature of poverty. These profiles are then used to refine income predictions and identify individuals at risk of long-term poverty. The proposed methodology effectively integrates diverse datasets, enhancing the accuracy of poverty predictions and enabling more targeted interventions to address poverty challenges in Belgium.

One of the most important risk factors for in-work poverty is the presence of children in the household. Individual-level mechanisms for the higher poverty risk for households with one or more children have to do with labor market participation. Institutional-level mechanisms refer to labor market regulation and social policies. In this paper, we delve into the social policy mechanism and extend it by resuming the fiscal impoverishment perspective and the literature that considers tax policy as a means of social policy. We focus on Germany 1984-2019 and use data from the Socio-Economic Panel to address two research questions: First, to what have extent the taxes and transfer alleviated or intensified poverty among working households across different historical phases in Germany? Second, has this trend affected households differently depending on the number of dependent children? We estimate fixed-effect regression models for the probability of being poor at each step of the income-generating process as a function of the presence and the number of children. Preliminary results show that between 1991 and 2004 the systematic disadvantage associated with larger household size emerges looking at income before taxes and transfers. When subtracting taxes and especially when adding transfers imply a reduction of the poverty risk for larger families, so that their poverty risk does not differ from that of households with 1 and 2 children. After 2005, the higher poverty risk for households with 2 and 3+ children compared to households concern both post-tax pre-transfer income and post-tax post-transfer income.

Educational divergence in family structures – known as the diverging destinies trend following McLanahan (2004) – has attracted considerable attention. The increasing prevalence of disadvantageous family forms (such as single parenthood) among the less educated can contribute to increasing inequality in children’s living conditions and life chances. Despite this commonly held argument, few studies have assessed it empirically. In this study, we analyze whether family bifurcation between 1990-2020 – measured as educational divergence in single parenthood as well as dual-earner families – has increased inequalities in children’s economic conditions in four countries, namely Czechia, Denmark, Germany and the United States. In the three European countries, family forms have diverged strongly by education and in the United States they were unequally distributed already in 1990. At the same time, inequality among children’s economic conditions by maternal education has increased. We use decomposition analysis to assess to what extent family bifurcation by education has contributed to increasing inequality in children’s economic conditions. Our findings show that family bifurcation has importantly contributed to increasing economic inequality among children.

I am interested in joining the panel ‘How to further reproducibility'. I can share my experiences as Data Editor of the Econometric Society.

I am interested in joining the panel ‘How to further reproducibility?’"With the help of more than 700 reviewers we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hard- and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles at least part of the dataset was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample reduces the share of reproduced articles to 68%. These figures represent a significant increase compared to the period before the introduction of the disclosure policy, where only 12% of articles voluntarily provided replication materials, out of which 55% could be (largely) reproduced. Substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility rates across different fields is mainly driven by differences in dataset accessibility. Other reasons for unsuccessful reproduction attempts include missing code, unresolvable code errors, weak or missing documentation, but also soft- and hardware requirements and code complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of journal code and data disclosure policies, and suggest potential avenues for enhancing their effectiveness.

I am interested in joining the panel 'How to further reproducibility?'In this talk, we will describe and discuss the open science efforts we have experimented with since taking over as editors of European Societies in 2021.  European Societies is the flagship journal of the European Sociological Association.  The journal receives around 200 submissions per year, of which about 80 per cent are based on quantitative data analyses, often drawing on publicly available survey or register data sets.  We describe our efforts to implement a replication package requirement at European Societies, describe reactions by stakeholders such as our publisher and authors and discuss challenges and lessons that we have learned.  We further describe the position of Data Editor, an editorial office staffer whose task it was to review replication packages and reproduce results shown in manuscripts, which we created for a year.  Challenges encountered by the data editor were in most cases obtaining access to the data, which despite being publicly available, were either not accessible by the data editor (e.g. Nordic register data) or not available within the time frame during which peer review is usually conducted (e.g. waiting times for access to EU-SILC). We conclude by outlining what we see as best practices for open science standards in sociological journal publishing.

We are interested in joining the panel ‘How reproducible and credible is sociological research?’. We report results from a project embedded in the large-scale META-REP initiative (https://www.meta-rep.uni-muenchen.de). Our study examines the openness (i.e., availability of research materials) and reproducibility (i.e., duplicability based on identical code and data) of published observational social research. Although openness and reproducibility are typically considered prerequisites for credible research, existing evidence suggests that even this minimum bar is often not met (e.g., due to incomplete replication material and deviations in estimates). However, systematic evaluations are rare.
Our study analyzes published papers from the social sciences, including sociology, that use data from the European Social Survey. This sampling frame allows us to abstract from differences in methods and statistical power across studies (e.g., large-N observational versus small-N experimental data) and instead focus on the role of contextual factors (e.g., links between openness/reproducibility and author constellations, journal impact). We will present:
Results from our openness audit of ~1.200 authors: What proportion of authors are willing to share replication materials? Can authors be nudged towards openness, and what role do contextual factors play for sharing materials?

Results from our reproduction audit of ~ 100 articles: What proportion of results are reproducible? Does reproducibility vary by journal/article characteristics?

Suggestions for improvement: How can barriers to reproducibility be removed (e.g. irreproducible workflows, unclear data documentation)? We expect this aspect to be particularly helpful for editors to improve reproducibility (e.g. by implementing submission guidelines for replication materials).

Note: I am interested in joining the panel 'How to further reproducibility?
The implementation of a Replication Policy at the European Sociological Review is currently underway. In this presentation, I will highlight critical issues that have emerged in the discussions within the ESR editorial board during the development of the policy. These issues are related to the specificity of certain types of empirical material used in sociological research, such as register data and qualitative data. They  also revolve around a distinction between a light or strict replication policy and raise questions about the professionalization of the review process. I will also discuss practical issues that have arisen in the process. Finally, I will conclude by sharing some thoughts on the potential of replication policies to enhance the credibility of published findings and to improve the state of the discipline.

Previous studies suggest a relationship between citizens’ well-being and neighborhood greenness: There are smaller differences in well-being between socio-economic status groups in very green urban areas. We argue that the view of greenery from home is the fundamental unit of a green neighborhood and analyze its relationship with residential satisfaction. Based on theories of stress reduction and well-being generation, we hypothesize that lower-class citizens benefit more from green window views than upper-class citizens. The data come from a population survey with a random selection of 1,800 respondents in two German cities that collected extensive information on both neighborhood greening and social background. The results show that green window views are associated with increased residential satisfaction, that they mitigate negative influences of noise pollution and room stress, and that they particularly benefit lower-class citizens. The study supports the hypothesis of an ‘equigenic’ potential of high levels of greenery in compact cities.

There are some solid facts about the health gender gap. Women live more than men, but women tend to declare worst health conditions, also controlling for age: “Men die, Women suffer”. Furthermore, the gender gap in mortality and health conditions is highly heterogeneous and changes over time and between countries.
It follows that various social factors, both individual and contextual, play a role in generating this heterogeneity.
The aim of this study is to investigate micro and macro predictors of health gender gap, considering at individual level the role of social conditions, in particular education, also taking in account macro-contextual characteristics. Data from both pre and post-pandemic periods are available for 17 European countries, allowing for an assessment of changes in gender health inequalities using multivariate analysis and indicators such as perceived health and health problems.
First, we present a descriptive analysis to introduce the topic. We then apply multilevel techniques to model the variance attributable to the different factors, using the European Social Survey (2018-2021) and ISSP (2021) datasets. This strategy allows us to estimate associations between individual social conditions and certain country-level contextual characteristics, such as the Gender Equity Index or macroeconomic conditions, and gender inequalities in health. This will enable us not only to assess how much individual and contextual factors matter, but also to try to understand whether and to what extent the pandemic has been a factor in widening or narrowing the observed gender health inequalities.

economic differences in the proportion of medically assisted reproduction (MAR) births are observed across many high-income countries. Yet, it is unclear which underlying factors may explain this phenomenon. In this study, we focus on a possible mechanism of disparities in the proportion of MAR births, and ask whether there are socio-economic disparities in the probability of a successful MAR treatment leading to a birth. We focus on novel data from Careggi Hospital, Florence, Italy, which comprise more than 4,500 treatments between 2016 and 2021. We estimate baseline and adjusted linear probability models. Our preliminary results do not point to any socio-economic difference in the probability of a successful MAR treatment in Careggi Hospital, Florence, Italy, a context with subsidized access to treatment. This finding may suggest that in settings with subsided access to treatments, preferences for children or other factors rather than differences in treatments success may be the underlying causes of existing disparities in the proportion of MAR births.

Perinatal health, measured here through low birth weight (LBW) is a major health determinant closely related to subsequent processes of cumulative (dis)advantage and, therefore, social stratification. This research aims to disentangle the relationship between individual stressors closely related to health at birth, through the measurement of the maternal socioeconomic resources, and the impact of in utero exposure to environmental pollution, a contextual stressor widely present in large metropolitan areas.
For the Spanish context, Madrid condenses both problematics. It is a city with a strong socio-spatial segregation, where population with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to cluster in the southern districts and, in addition, it is a city with high levels of pollution, especially related to traffic. I will use register data from the Childbirth Statistics Bulletin, for the perinatal health and maternal SES variables, and pollution data from The Integrated Air Quality System of the Madrid City Council, focusing on NO2, a surrogate for traffic-related pollution.
The objective of this article is to study whether there is a correlation between worse perinatal outcomes and high levels of pollution in Madrid, and whether there is an unequal distribution of these worse outcomes, affecting to a greater extent those geographical areas associated with lower socioeconomic strata in the city of Madrid. Detecting the clustering of stressors (both individual and contextual) that influence health at birth can help to identify socio-spatial segregation and promote policy measures to mitigate this negative impact.

This paper will first present a qualitative pre-survey carried out in France with recruiters in order to understand the place of human skills, also known as 'soft skills', as well as the place of combined criteria such as gender, ethnicity and religion in the categorisation present in the discourses of recruiters concerning French candidates of Maghrebi origin. The paper will secondly present the results of a survey experiment (over 1,500 respondents) that measure the effect of adding a reference letter and, more specifically, the effect of highlighting both "technical" and "human" skills in this letter, when applying for a job. The aim of this survey experiment is to highlight the positive effect of the reference letter on recruiters' evaluation of candidates of North African origin in France. Moreover, the objective is to understand stereotypes through counter-stereotyping, using reference letter.

For the more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands, different policy conditions apply compared to other refugee groups because of the application of the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD). In the Netherlands, access to the labour market is paired with a lack of civic integration obligations for Ukrainian refugees. This stands in clear contrast to permit holders, who need to complete a civic integration exam in order to qualify for permanent residency. These divergent policy conditions create the unique possibility to compare the impact of the former ‘work first’ approach with the latter ‘settle first’ approach on the early job matching and labour market positioning of refugees. In general, an occupational downgrade is to be expected after arrival because of a difficult adjustment process – the first step of a ‘U-curve’. An important question is whether ‘settle first’ through civic integration can alleviate the depth of this U-curve, or in other words, diminish the degree of refugee disadvantage. To answer this question, I compare matched groups of Ukrainian refugees with Syrian permit holders in the Netherlands, analyzing representative large-scale survey and registry data. The results of this comparison are highly relevant for the evaluation of refugee integration policies with respect to their effects on the ability of refugees to find a matching job and obtain a favourable position on the new host country labour market.

Anonimizing résumés has been proposed as a strategy to address persistent ethnic minority discrimination in the labor market. This study employs an audit field experiment (Lancee et al., 2021) to investigate whether excluding a photograph from résumés impacts callback rates for ethnic minorities in Germany and The Netherlands, two countries with differing social norms regarding the inclusion of photos in job applications. The findings reveal varied responses: while the omission of a picture may benefit ethnic minorities in Germany, it could potentially diminish job opportunities for them in The Netherlands. We next explore the implications of full anonymization policies, noting that previous experiments indicate promise in mitigating ethnic discrimination during initial recruitment stages. However, such policies require careful execution and should not be regarded as a one-size-fits-all solution.

Research on stereotypes against ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities using an intersectional approach often focus on interactions between only two categories. We use novel methodological developments to investigate the social structures of stereotypes, focusing on whether they are more or less intersectionally complex, that is, better explained looking at intersections of group memberships, or by focusing on one at a time. By fielding a factorial survey experiment in nine European countries with randomised values of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion, we aim to test the extent to which effects vary across intersectional combinations, and to the extent main effects or interactions explain variance.

Within the framework of the Second Demographic Transition, ideational considerations and values emphasizing autonomy are believed to contribute to the emergence of late parenthood and voluntary childlessness. To date, however, it is unclear what the high-ordered needs really entail. This study focuses on two relevant yet understudied human values, hedonism and stimulation. These two values have become particularly important for millennials. Our goal is to understand whether these values may explain the changing attitudes towards late parenthood and childfree lifestyles. Moreover, we aim to examine if the associations differ by gender at the micro level and family–fun compatibility at macro level. We used data from the European Social Survey conducted in 2018. Our results suggest that stimulation-minded individuals are more likely to prefer late parenthood. Although hedonism does not have a direct effect, hedonistic women are inclined to favor later ideal ages for parenthood, as well as hedonistic individuals living in countries that have a very strong culture of child-centeredness. Furthermore, hedonistic women were more likely to belong to the group of “late + approval of childlessness” and less likely to belong to the “not late + disapproval of childlessness” group. At the same time, hedonistic and stimulation-seeking individuals who lived in countries emphasizing child-centeredness are more likely to prefer “late” but not necessarily childlessness. This study offers insights into the complex interplay between human values and contemporary family planning, providing a nuanced understanding of why some individuals perceive freedom and parenthood as compatible while the others do not.

This study aims to assess whether Italy and Spain still align with traditional family ideals, thereby challenging the prevailing notion that they are homogeneous family-oriented countries. Moreover, it seeks to determine whether family ideals in these two countries are progressing along similar paths, or if there are signs of growing divergence. To explore this, we designed a factorial survey experiment involving family scenarios, in which participants were asked to assess the perceived success of the described families. This analytical approach allows us to discern the importance attributed to different family characteristics and how it varies in Italy and Spain. Preliminary results suggest that family patterns associated with the Second Demographic Transition are more accepted in Spain than in Italy. Nevertheless, both countries seem to have undergone an important transition in family ideals. Indeed, our results reveal that in both countries, factors such as communication and couple support are deemed more important for a family than marriage and having more than one child. Moreover, both in Italy and Spain, but especially in Spain, egalitarian families are evaluated more positively than traditional ones, and both partners’ work family balance is considered an important attribute for a successful family.

Separation lowers mothers’ financial well-being. So far, the negative implications of family dissolution have mainly been assessed in arrangements with one residential mother and a non-residential father. In recent years, joint physical custody – indicating that children reside roughly equally with both parents – have become more common in most Western countries. Theoretically, joint physical custody should contribute positively to mothers’ economic well-being. Empirically, however, it remains unclear whether this is the case. In this study we systematically assess whether physical custody arrangements are associated with mothers’ economic well-being after separation in two different contexts, namely Germany and Finland. We focus on the role of child support policies and policies encouraging maternal employment.Empirically, we adopt a case-based design and use two unique data sets with extensive information about post-separation families, namely the Family Models in Germany (FAMOD) study and the Survey among Separated Parents in Finland. We analyze mothers’ subjective assessment of their economic situation, and differentiate between sole, asymmetric, and joint physical custody arrangements. The results from ordered logistic regression (ORL) models and KHB-decompositions suggest that incentives set by child support policies are relevant. In Finland, particularly joint physical custody is associated with higher levels of economic well-being. In Germany, also asymmetric joint custody enhances economic well-being. The countries differ partly in confounding and mediating factors. In Germany, employment and new partnerships contribute to the higher well-being of mothers in joint physical custody. In Finland, where maternal full-time employment is more common, these factors play a smaller role.

The objective of our paper is to examine whether the Dutch corporate boardroom quota reduces the gender wage gap in organizational levels below leadership.
Policy makers in advanced economies increasingly implement boardroom quota policies to tackle the glass ceiling. A major promise of quota policies is, however, to bring about gender equality in lower levels of the organization, beyond the boardroom. However, the debate on whether more quota-induced gender equality in the boardroom positively affects women below leadership level is largely unsettled. Theory suggests that a shift in power distribution in the boardroom may cause trickle-down mechanisms from which female workers below the boardroom level profit.
The Dutch quota law applies to companies that exceed a size, asset, and revenue threshold. Using Dutch employer-employee linked longitudinal administrative microdata, we make use of this by applying a regression discontinuity (RD) design with fixed effects regression models to estimate the causal effect of the Dutch corporate boardroom quota (2013-) on the gender wage gap. We test whether the effect differs across lower- and higher-levels in companies to determine whether the boardroom quota policy effectively reaches all organizational levels below the boardroom.
We hypothesize that the corporate boardroom quota decreases the gender wage gap in companies affected by it.

Labor market outcomes are the joint result of processes of selection and self-selection. Previous research emphasized that women and men select and are selected into different occupations and career tracks and as a result gender inequality in paid and unpaid work is still very much present. Women more often work part-time and have more care obligations. These characteristics are typically regarded as being role incongruent with leadership positions and might lead to the so-called flexibility stigma. While findings on how employers’ promotion decisions take such employee characteristics into account are generally scarce and partially inconclusive, we know even less about the potentially mitigating effects of organizational work-family policies. Building on a factorial survey experiment conducted with a probability sample of 1,380 organizations, we study employers’ promotion decisions in Germany. We find that employers consider women and men equally eligible for promotion. However, among those who are eligible, women have a slightly higher promotion probability in organizations that employ mainly women, whereas there is no gender difference in promotion probabilities in gender-balanced or men-dominated organizations. Working part-time or having care obligations generally reduces the promotion eligibility as well as probability. Women working in organizations that have policies reconciling work and family life have a higher promotion probability than men, whereas there is no significant gender difference if the organization does not have such policies. For employees working part-time or those having care obligations, policies to reconcile work and family life do not compensate their lower promotion chances.

This study delves into the intricate dynamics of gender categorization and its implications for inequality research. Following queer and trans studies, it leverages data from the Mexican National Survey on Sexual and Gender Diversity to investigate how the way in which we classify gender affects estimates of educational differences. Four distinct ways of categorizing gender locations are used to analyze educational outcomes. Linear models are employed to analyze disparities between gender categories that have been used in previous research. Additionally, latent class analysis is used to inductively identify gender locations among non-cis individuals. Preliminary results reveal significant insights: queer* individuals exhibit an initial advantage in educational outcomes compared to their cis counterparts, although this effect diminishes when accounting for age. In contrast, trans* individuals face significant educational disadvantages when considering age. Surprisingly, binary or non-binary identification demonstrates no significant impact on educational outcomes. However, when combining these two ways of categorization, leverage in educational terms for queer non-binary people, while a significant penalty for trans-non-binary people is found. These preliminary findings underline the complexity of gender categorization and its impact on research outcomes, suggesting a need to reconsider conventional methods of data collection and research on gender diversity. By embracing a comprehensive and inclusive approach, this research broadens the understanding of how gender identities intersect with educational outcomes, encouraging further exploration into the intricate interplay of gender location and educational inequalities.

Gender segregation is considered the leading cause behind the gender pay gap. Reducing gender segregation, therefore, is likely to promote gender equality overall. Gender integration in the labour market has stalled in the US and other countries.  Zhu and Grusky (2022) explain this stagnation of gender integration with the passing on of male-typed occupations from father to son. Fathers do not pass on their male-typed occupations to their daughters. This one-sided “inheritance” of male-typed occupations stabilizes the status quo of gender segregation since it becomes more pronounced again. While it's established that children often follow similar occupations and educational fields as their parents, there is limited knowledge regarding trends in this intergenerational transmission of horizontal stratification and its connection to gender segregation. The question arises if this exciting explanation for the stalled gender integration can also explain the stagnation of gender segregation in other countries. Where contextual effects like gender regime and the structure of the labour market that impact gender segregation differ.  By considering over forty countries from the ISSP and the ESS datasets over thirty years, we examine the gendered intergenerational patterns of segregation in relation to contextual factors.

Over the past 170 years the United States (US) has undergone demographic, structural and cultural changes that are reflected in – and a reflection of – changes in living arrangements. We provide the first wholistic account of living arrangements in the US from 1850–2021 using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples. Based on the type of (non-)kin relationship between each individual and their household members, we classify living arrangements broadly into alone, immediate kin, and extended households, with detailed sub-categories (e.g., single-parent household, multigenerational family). Adjusting for changes in mortality, we calculate years of life expectancy spent in each living arrangement, and decompose the contribution of different age groups to period changes in living arrangements. Then, we describe stability and change across cohorts. Our results are consistent with three successive systems of living arrangements. During an “extended family” stage (1850–1940), most life-years at population level were spent living with parents and/or children, frequently with other relatives or non-kin. The gradual decline in mixed (family plus non-kin) extended households and the expansion of couple-only households gave way to an “immediate-kin” phase (1940–1980) characterised by the rapid expansion of the dual-parent model, and a decline in extended kin-only households. Since 1980, a new “diversified” era has witnessed the decline in dual-parent households as more years are spent as a single parent or with multigenerational kin. We discuss the structural, cultural, and demographic roots of these changes.

Socioeconomic inequalities in mortality is key information for public health preventive policies. We aim to assess the magnitude of educational inequalities in mortality in Spain by ages and causes of death. We used the mortality register and population exposure data for Spain at ages 30 and over for the time period 2016-21 This data included age, sex, educational attainment and causes of death. We estimated all-cause and age- and cause-specific avoidable mortality (death counts and proportion of deaths –attributable fractions-) by assuming all educational groups to have the mortality from high educated group. A total of 206,871 annual female deaths and 214,248 annual male deaths aged 35-99 years old occurred. Our analyses suggest that if all population were exposed to the mortality risks of the higher educated group the observed deaths would reduce by 38,797 deaths in females and 40,754 deaths in males, which corresponds to fractions of avoidable mortality of 18.8% and 19.0%, respectively. The estimated avoidable deaths due to educational inequality proved to be substantially different across age groups and educational groups. Further analyses will include cause-specific results. Educational inequalities in mortality remain a major public health challenge. Public health interventions addressing the determinants of inequalities in health have a great potential for reducing mortality.  

Substantial evidence suggests that inequalities in health begin from the starting gate and that children’s early environments “get under the skin” from the earliest moments of life. Early childhood is therefore crucial in the production of health inequalities. While most of the evidence on childhood health inequalities revolves around monetary poverty, we apply an alternative concept of multidimensional deprivation. This shift arises from a recognition that monetary poverty may not capture the same construct for young children as for adults. Drawing from three nationally-representative birth cohorts from France, the UK and the US, we construct a multi-domain, child-cantered framework that allows us to explore how deprivation links to early health. Our preliminary findings show the significance of deprivation in shaping children’s health, and we discern distinct patterns emerging in three countries. Moreover, we show that deprivation matters above and beyond income, and it is not just a proxy for income.

Following the transformation of European societies and their educational policies, how school constitution and the varying levels of Socioeconomic Status (SES) diversity affect social inequality require comprehensive understanding. One set of arguments emphasizes the benefits of diverse classroom contexts on SES-based achievement equality, by enhancing the access to social capital, which can be accessed through inter-SES support with students’ social network among peers. However, homophily—the tendency to interact with similar others—might foster segregation along SES, thereby reducing peers’ inter-SES support. Consolidation, which highlight that homophily based on one trait may inadvertently lead to segregation based on another, is another argumentation considered detrimental to inter-SES support.
We explore whether higher-level SES diversity elevates the proportion of inter-SES help seeking, whether SES consolidation alongside gender and ethnic origin hinders inter-SES help seeking, and whether enhanced inter-SES help seeking can diminish SES-based achievement inequality.
Utilizing multi-level regression models applied to data from a large-scale German assessment study with about 35,000 ninth-grade students, the results indicate that greater SES diversity can increase inter-SES help seeking ratio, against the homophily tendency. Conversely, classrooms with higher level of SES consolidation along gender and ethnic origin exhibit reduced ratio of inter-SES help seeking. The extended  inter-SES help-seeking proportion in turn diminishes achievement inequality
These findings contribute to insights in understanding the role of school constitution, suggesting that mixed-SES classrooms benefit peer inter-SES support, which in turn promotes achievement equality. Nevertheless, increased SES consolidation along gender and ethnic origin may challenge this advantage, calling for prudence in educational practices.

Extant research has examined the effect of teacher-student matches in terms of gender and race, finding positive returns for some, but not all, educational outcomes for students from specific minority groups. However, hardly any studies examine how similarity in teachers’ and students’ socioeconomic background relates to students’ educational outcomes. Using Danish administrative registers, we explore how teacher-student SES matches impact diverse outcomes, including test score performance, track recommendations, and student well-being. Methodologically, we exploit variation in teacher SES for the same student within the same year but across different subjects. The longitudinal data structure allows us to leverage variation in teacher SES within the same subject but across different time periods. Drawing on cultural capital theory and the literature on teachers as “educational gatekeepers”, we argue that low-SES students benefit from exposure to teachers with similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

The notion that peers influence each other in terms of skills, expectations, and choices has been deeply rooted in sociological literature since the early ’60. Nevertheless, the peer effect literature still provides contradictory theoretical and empirical accounts of how the ability level among peers affects students, calling for a further understanding of peer influence in itself and of the role of the context where peer influence occurs. In this paper, we explore three dimensions that are often overlooked in the literature. First, in addition to the conventional average ability among peers, we assess the impact of being exposed to low- and high-performing peers. Second, we look at whether peer effects are modified by the social origin of the students. Finally, we offer a comparative perspective, allowing us to examine how peer effects come into play within different institutional contexts. Using Italian and Norwegian administrative data, we investigate three cohorts in three academic years at lower secondary school. Estimates from school fixed effects models show that exposure to a generally skilled peer group negatively affects math and language skills and that being exposed to highly skilled peers always has a negative impact, while exposure to less competent peers has a positive impact. Further, we find that students from advantaged families are able to compensate for these negative patterns. Finally, we find that the similarities in the mechanisms of peer effects between the two countries are surprisingly consistent, suggesting that the context does not modify the influence of peers.

As robustness of social science is getting more attention, analytical choices have turned out to be more important than previously thought. In this paper, we investigate the robustness of intergenerational educational mobility estimates using multiverse analysis, a technique for incorporating many analyses into one framework while varying analytical choices such as variable coding, mobility measures, and exclusion criteria. Using European Social Survey (ESS) data from 16 European countries, results show substantial variation, both in point estimates and rank orderings among countries. Even so, the central tendency of country ranks accords well with previous literature. While any single ranking comes with considerable uncertainty, the field has nevertheless produced a relatively robust set of empirical findings.

I am interested in joining the panel 'How reproducible and credible is sociological research?]'This paper has two aims. First, it will survey the limited attempts at replication in studies of social movements and collective protest, and draw lessons from my own contribution (Biggs, Barrie, and Andrews 2020). The second aim of this paper is to introduce an original replication of another article, on the causes of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014 (Williamson, Trump, and Einstein 2018). Using a different—and in my view theoretically preferable—measure of protest strengthens the authors’ findings. This raises a counterintuitive problem of replication which has hitherto been unappreciated: there is even less incentive to publish a replication which vindicates the target article, and this could lead us to underestimate the replicability of published findings. 

Social research is in a dismal state: more and more inconsistent results are accumulating (Auspurg/Brüderl 2022). Mixed empirical evidence pervades most areas of research. In this paper, we argue that this is not primarily due to researchers making (hidden) errors in the preparation and analysis of their data. Rather, we argue that it is due to researchers not clearly defining the question to be answered (the estimand) and not thinking carefully about the identification assumptions under which the question could be answered given the data at hand. We illustrate this argument with the example of research on the age-happiness trajectory. Our review of the literature shows that almost every conceivable pattern has been reported. Most authors simply estimated a regression with age as the “treatment” variable without discussing any identification assumptions. Thus, it remained unclear what the estimand was and whether the study succeeded in providing a valid answer. Our reconstruction of the literature shows that the literature has (implicitly) answered different questions with different degrees of success. Many studies aimed at a causal estimand but failed due to implausible identification assumptions (mis-specified models). Using German SOEP data, we show that these mis-specified models have contributed to the mixed empirical evidence. Furthermore, we are able to reproduce most of the previously reported trajectories when implementing typical mis-specifications. We conclude by arguing that future studies should clearly state the estimand, identification, and estimation assumptions. This would help to separate methodological from substantive reasons for mixed evidence.

I am interested in joining the panel "How reproducible and credible is sociological research?".Statistical models play a crucial role in addressing research questions within the field of sociology and have an impact on both research outcomes and policy recommendations. Despite their widespread use, the reproducibility of these models remains largely unexplored. This study focuses on four central topics: fertility, marriage, divorce, and regional mobility. These issues involve decisions where the stakes are high and which require a conscious decision on the part of the actors. We examine models from two time periods (1975–1985 and 2010–2020), assuming that newer models may have improved reproducibility. Utilizing citation indices from Web of Science and Scopus, we select publications from high-impact journals. The selected models and datasets are prepared as outlined in the articles. However, there are inconsistencies in the data descriptions and the preparation methods, which vary in detail. Despite assumptions, reproducibility does not significantly differ between newer and older models. The inability to precisely replicate statistical analyses raises concerns about the credibility and generalizability of research findings, prompting a call for a reevaluation of research practices in sociology.

There are still strong associations between peoples’ socio-economic position and their socio-economic background. An ongoing discussion within the field is about how to conceptualize and measure these socio-economic positions. Despite fierce debates on prevailing social class schemes to analyse social stratification, there is surprisingly little critique on the apparent convention of eliminating the jobless people in class mobility research. Important studies only include people or households who work or have worked. In this study we explain and demonstrate that this practice is problematic. By excluding the jobless, scholars miss an important group of disadvantaged people and introduce a considerable bias because women and ethnic minorities are overrepresented among the jobless. We examine this by re-analysing social mobility trends and patterns in Europe, using data from the first seven waves of the European Social Survey (n = 207,936 people and 32 countries). It appears that both the percentage of jobless people and people growing up in a jobless household vary considerable between countries. UniDiff models indicate that the cross-national patterns with ‘high’ and ‘low’ fluidity countries are different when including the jobless. In addition, symmetrical odds ratios show large social distances between the jobless and all other classes. When we compare three birth cohorts, we see that the relative immobility increased significantly over time between the salariat classes and the jobless. This indicates an increasingly devastating effect over time of growing up in a jobless household. Further analyses show that this is especially the case among women.

As a socialist country that has experienced market transition and rapid industrialization, China has attracted substantial scholarly attention with regard to its social mobility dynamics. This paper contributes to the research in this field by considering important features of China’s market transition—most notably a gradual reform which preserved political power and retained an influential state sector—into the analysis of social mobility. Using pooled data from the latest 7 waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) (year 2010-2021, N=33295), and including individuals from four cohorts who experienced different stages of market transition, this paper specifically explores how the ownership-based labour market segmentation and political power shape patterns of social mobility. The analysis of absolute mobility reveals that although the upgrading of occupational structures can be found both in the state and private sector, it is more evident in the private sector, which brings about the private sector having greater absolute mobility than the state sector. Regarding the sectoral difference in social fluidity, analysis based on log-linear models also shows that individuals face fewer barriers to achieving upward mobility in the private sector than in the state sector, but the level of social fluidity sees a convergence between the sectors among younger cohorts. Furthermore, this paper finds children of political power elites have greater access to top positions either in the state or private sector, but only female respondents present some additional relative advantages in being reproduced as political or economic elites.

Equality of opportunity is widely acknowledged as a fundamental principle of justice. However, its exact definition remains a subject of debate, and current methods for mea- suring it are found lacking. Here we aim to address these concerns by introducing both theoretical and methodological innovations. First, we distinguish between a ’liberal’ and a ’radical’ definition of equality of opportunity. The former recognises as fair the inequalities arising from different natural abilities, while the latter includes genetic endowments in the category of morally arbitrary factors, such as social origin, gender, or ethnicity, that do not form a just basis for inequality. Second, we measure ability by means of polygenic scores, which allow us to better approximate the impact of genes net of environmental influence. Using genetic information as opposed to observed ability results in more robust estimates of liberal and radical inequality of opportunity across education, income, and occupation. On average, 8.4% of the individual differences in these three important outcomes are unfair in a liberal sense, and 23.8% are unfair in a radical sense. Distinguishing between alternative conceptions of inequality and leveraging genetic information allow us to further disentangle the opportunities structure in modern societies, shedding light on the different components that lead to an unjust distribution of life-chances.

This paper contributes to the comparative literature in social stratification research, by linking country-level measures of the intergenerational transmission of status to indicators of the countries’ political economy. We use the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) inequality modules (1992; 1999; 2009; 2019) combined with the EU-SILC intergenerational mobility modules (2005, 2011, 2019), all ESS waves (2002-2022) and a selection of national surveys including retrospective information on parents’ education and occupation for non-Western countries. We estimate five measures of social mobility: (i) the intergenerational transmission of occupational status; (ii) the intergenerational transmission of education; (iii) the intergenerational transmission of occupational status, net of education; (iv) the rate of absolute mobility; (v) the rate of social fluidity, net of the changes in the occupational structure. We correlate them to empirical indicators of welfare regime (Esping-Andersen 1990) and production regime (Hall and Soskice 2002). Our preliminary estimates of the intergenerational transmission of occupational status (ISEI), show a general trend of decrease over time, but there is also substantial heterogeneity to be seen. In terms of country clustering, there is some evidence for a lower correlation in the Anglo-Saxon countries, who show less welfare generosity, more market freedom and a weaker intergenerational association. Other non-Western countries included in our analysis (Japan and Chile) are also found in this cluster, while the Continental countries show a stronger status persistence, associated to substantially higher social expenditure and a substantially higher market regulation. However, there is no clear clustering concerning neither the Scandinavian countries nor the Mediterranean ones.

Over the past two decades, relative poverty rates in the UK has been remarkably stable despite significant economic downturns and regressive policy changes. While poverty rates have not been changed, recent evidence show that poverty experiences are more intensified, and extreme forms of poverty such as destitution has been on the rise. In this paper, we study the conditions of the poorest, whom are not captured by standard poverty measures, but likely to suffer from recent austerity reforms in the UK. Our aim is to understand whether we are lifting the standards for everyone or leaving the poorest behind. Using long-term longitudinal survey data, we build a measure of income floor based on moving averages, and observe and explain the trends and changes in its levels. Our findings show a secular increase in the income floor between 1990 and 2013, followed by a sharp decline coinciding with the implementation of austerity measures. The income floor in Great Britain is largely made of social protection benefits, in particular those related to children and housing, and as a result is very responsive to policy changes. Decomposition results based on counterfactual simulations suggest that the drop in the income floor between 2013 and 2019 is largely explained by changes in tax-benefit policies.

Labour market automation and digitalisation are changing labour relations and creating new forms of work that do not properly adjust to traditional social protection schemes. Income support policies in conventional welfare states fail to include non-standard workers, either because they are not entitled to contributory benefits or because non-contributory social transfers are not compatible with labour income. This typically creates gaps in social protection and income instability for many households. At present, there are broad discussions on which alternative income support policies would be better suited to tackle in-work poverty and inequality in this new scenario. The debate mainly revolves around two alternatives, which are 1) in-work benefits, such as Wage Supplements (WS) or Guaranteed Income (GI) programmes compatible with labour income, and 2) a flat-rate Universal Basic Income (UBI). In this contribution, firstly, we aim to analyse the current coverage gaps in the Spanish income guarantee system, including unemployment benefits and subsidies, regional minimum income schemes and the Minimum Vital Income. Secondly, we aim to create evidence that can help answer the question of which would be the preferred policy reform option in the case of Spain, by simulating alternative options of in-work benefits and basic income policies and examining their impact.

Individuals seeking protection in Germany are geographically distributed by authorities after their arrival. In the assigned region they are obliged to live in reception centers and shared accommodations until the asylum procedure has been completed. Originally, residential restrictions were lifted once a protection status was granted. However, since the so-called Integration Act came into force on the 6th of August 2016, freedom of movement is restricted further and refugees can be subject to a residency restriction for additional three years after they were granted protection. Depending on the federal state they live in, this restriction can be as narrowly as on the district or municipality level. This paper investigates how residency restrictions affect the health of refugees. It is hypothesized that for example through feelings of exclusion or disenfranchisement or regional differences in the availability of health services, residency restriction can have an impact on health outcomes.
The paper relies on the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees and methodologically employs an instrumental variable approach where the timing of being granted protection status (pre or post the reform) is used as an instrument. Additionally, the paper leverages the distribution of refugees across Germany upon arrival and state-level variations in implementing the restrictions.
With the paper, a more precise understanding of the extensive effects of limiting the spatial mobility of individuals is enabled. Since health is a basic prerequisite for labor market participation, ways of how the holistic integration of refugees into the labor market and society can be improved will become apparent.

Digital services are the main channel for migrants to gather information on how to organize their lives in receiving countries. However, local authorities often struggle to provide the necessary digital platforms to meet this demand. For the German case, this study utilizes fine-grained usage-data on the "Integreat" app which provides a digital platform for local authorities to address migrants within their jurisdiction in multiple languages on available social services and administrative procedures. By 2024, the app, which is operated by a private non-profit company, is available in about 25% of all cities and counties in Germany. The data comprises around one hundred cities or counties and over 9.5 million individual app-visits between 2018 and 2023. First, it is explored descriptively which regions are more inclined to adopt such digital solutions. Second, it is assessed as to what extent the app’s introduction causally affected migrants' integration measures on a local level by looking at official data on subject areas usually covered in the app, such as language courses, employment or training. Methodologically, a difference-in-difference design is being implemented, by exhausting both the staggered introduction of the app across regions and by over-time comparisons of participating regions to others that have not yet adopted a comparable solution. This study provides valuable insights into the understanding and development of digital strategies to facilitate migrants in navigating complex and initially foreign administrative processes. Thereby, it also addresses the growing challenges faced by many local authorities in recruiting sufficient personnel for in-person migration counseling.

This study examines high-achieving students in Norwegian lower secondary schools who follow accelerated learning trajectories in mathematics, so-called fast tracks. The study examines whether and how fast tracks improve high-achieving students’ learning and performance. The analyses rely on high-quality administrative register data from Norway with complete information for all students.  The results show that fast-track students outperform regular students in mathematics. Fast-track students are overrepresented with top school grades, so effects might be underestimated using standard methods. Therefore, we rely on Tobit regression models to account for the ceiling effects in school grades and also deploy a novel application of cross-random effects (the Mundlak model), integrating a fixed effects methods design in the nonlinear Tobit models. The results suggest that (1) the fast tracks improve the students’ learning, and (2) the students are selected and self-selected – based on prior performance and background characteristics. When comparing teacher-set grades vs. exam grades set by anonymous random assigned examinators, the results suggest that (3) teachers give fast-track students even better grades than regular students. One plausible explanation is that teachers perceive or label fast-track students as more talented than other students. The findings especially suggest that Norwegian teachers compensate disadvantaged fast-track students.
Keywords: Fast-track, accelerated learning, high-performing students, teacher bias

Teacher-awarded grades can act as crucial signals about academic skills, which affects students’ choice of secondary and tertiary education. However, on average, boys, ethnic/racial minorities, and students with low parental education receive lower grades from their teacher than in external assessments. These lower grades may then misinform students about their academic potential and cause them to lower their ambitions, leading to social inequality in educational attainment with implications for social mobility. Hence, understanding what mechanisms are driving the disparities between teacher awarded grades and external assessments is an important issue in equalizing educational opportunities. In this study, we use Danish administrative register data (n ~ 190,000 – 440,000) and exploit a natural experiment to estimate the role for teacher bias of statistical discrimination, which arises because teachers use observable group membership as a proxy for unobserved skills. In 2010, the Danish government introduced a mandatory, external, and standardized test in the 8th grade, the results of which the teacher receives. If grading disparities are mainly driven by statistical discrimination, standardized tests will reduce teacher bias because the test results reveal otherwise unobserved skills, eliminating the need to use group membership as a proxy. We find that grading disparities are largely unaffected and interpret this result as evidence that statistical discrimination is unlikely to play a substantial role for teacher bias and we should look elsewhere for explanations of grading disparities.

This study investigates whether children's genetic propensity for externalizing behaviors influences their likelihood of experiencing adverse outcomes in high school and whether this relationship varies by family socioeconomic status (SES). We test two theories from behavioral genetics and social stratification, such as the diathesis-stress model and the compensatory advantage model, which suggest a stronger genetic association to adverse outcomes among low-SES children. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and the National Child Development Study (NCDS), we construct a polygenic index (PGI) for externalizing behaviors. Our analysis examines the impact of this PGI on high-school outcomes, including failure, suspension, expulsion, absence, and misbehaviors, and explores its interaction with family SES. The findings reveal two key insights. First, a higher genetic propensity for externalizing behaviors increases the likelihood of adverse high-school outcomes. Second, the genetic propensity for externalizing behaviours is more predictive of high-school failure, absence, and misbehaviours among low-SES children compared to high-SES children. These results are robust to different model specifications, except for high-school suspension and expulsion. Our results suggest that high-SES families compensate for their children's high genetic propensity for externalizing behaviors, thereby mitigating the risk of having negative academic outcomes.
Keywords: Family socio-economic status; Externalizing behaviours, Adverse school outcomes, Polygenic index (PGI), Gene-environment interaction (GxE); Compensatory advantage model; Diathesis-stress model; the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), the National Child Development Study (NCDS)

A growing body of research investigates whether genetic influences on educational outcomes can be suppressed or boosted by the environment in which an individual lives. Indeed, several studies have examined the interaction between the genetic propensity for education and the socioeconomic status (SES) of the family of origin, the neighborhood, or school - so-called GxSES studies. However, results are mixed. Some studies find stronger associations between genetic propensities and educational outcomes in high-SES environments, while other studies find stronger associations in low-SES environments. In this study, we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that investigated the interaction between genetic propensity for education and SES on measures of educational attainment and achievement. Focusing on studies relying on molecular genetic information in the form of polygenic indices (PGI) we aim to answer the following questions: (1) Does the genetic propensity for education matter more for educational outcomes in high or low-SES environments? (2) Which factors may explain the inconsistent findings of the previous literature? To address these questions, we collect results from both published and working papers investigating the interaction of interest and using molecular data. We analyze these results in a series of graphs exploring the influence of type of SES environment (family SES, neighborhood, school), type of SES operationalization, type of outcome, country, and cohort. As this paper relies on publicly available data, results will be ready well in advance of the ECSR conference.

Not only the provision of formal daycare for young children, but also its quality has become an issue of political concern. This experimental study investigates how a hypothetical improvement in the quality of daycare facilities shapes normative judgements regarding daycare use and working hours for parents with young children in Germany. The analysis is framed using capability-based explanations combined with theoretical concepts of ideals of care and normative policy feedback theories. We draw on a factorial survey experiment implemented in 2019/2020 in the German Family Panel (pairfam) measuring underlying work-care norms for a couple with a 15-month-old child under different contextual conditions. Ordered logistic and linear multilevel regressions were conducted with 5,324 respondents. On average, high hypothetical daycare quality for young children leads respondents to recommend greater daycare use and longer working hours for mothers and fathers by about 1 hour per week. Multinomial regression models additionally reveal that high-level daycare quality moderately increases support for modified breadwinner and dual full-time constellations for parents. Respondents who hold more egalitarian gender beliefs, those with tertiary education, native Germans and parents tend to respond more strongly to higher daycare quality by increasing their support for full-daycare use. The results point to the relevance of high quality for increasing the acceptance and subsequently take-up of formal daycare. However, the stronger normative acceptance among the higher educated and native-born may reduce potential benefits of daycare quality improvements for children’s development by exacerbating existing social inequalities in daycare take-up and maternal employment.

Women are still substantially less often (full-time) employed than men. This is particularly true for mothers. Our study aims at understanding mothers’ decision to return to employment after child-related career interruptions by considering factors that have previously been neglected. While the impact of individual-level determinants (e.g. education, earnings, marital status) has been well documented, a shift towards institutional and structural explanations (e.g. regional childcare provision) proved promising. We tie in with this stream of research by examining whether the regional conservative culture influences the duration of career interruptions and mothers’ return to part-time versus full-time employment. We distinguish three contextual conditions: labour market structure, infrastructure, and culture. We focus on the later, however, this involves careful considering the two former ones since they are theoretically and empirically intertwined. We match regional data with the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (GSOEP) for the years 2006-2019. Regional variables are measured on the administrative district level (NUTS3). Labour market structures are captured by unemployment and female employment rates. Infrastructure is captured by the regional provision with childcare. Regional culture is depicted by the share of conservative voters. We apply event-history models to analyse the duration until mothers’ return to (part-time/full-time) employment. We find regional conservativism to influence the duration to returning to full-time, yet, not to part-time work. This effect remains stable when controlling for various individual and regional factors. We tentatively conclude that regional cultural and normative aspects should be factored in, in addition to opportunity structures when investigating gender-specific employment inequalities.

There is accumulating and strong empirical evidence that a gender egalitarian ideology of the partners is related to a more egalitarian share of housework among couples. Recent research also points out that gender ideology itself may not be stable among individuals over time. However, there is little evidence on the changes in gender and family attitudes in non-Western contexts. Using data from 25 waves (1993–2017) of the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), we construct fixed-effects models that reveal how women’s gender attitudes, together with life events just as parenthood and women’s employment, shape unpaid work distribution in Japanese couples. The findings reveal that the change in wife’s gender ideology does not have a significant effect on increasing the husband’s share of domestic work over the course of the relationship. However, the interaction effect with parenthood is statistically significant. For couples without children, the more egalitarian attitudes wife has, the higher the husband's share of housework/childcare. However, for couples with children, there is no significant relationship between women’s gender role attitudes and the husband’s share of housework/childcare. It suggests that, once a couple has a child, the husband becomes unresponsive to the wife’s gender-role attitude, even if the wife’s working conditions or the wife’s share of income do not change after the birth.

Our study aims to analyze the effect of a paternity leave entitlement of equal and non-transferable leave entitlements on the division of labor within the household. As we rely on a longitudinal survey, we can test, for the first time, the long-term effects of paternity leave on care.
We exploit variation in paternity leave length stemming from a recent, drastic policy reform in Spain. Until 2017, paternity leave in Spain was only two weeks. Following a gradual set of reforms in paternity leave between 2017 and 2021, as of January of 2021, fathers are entitled to 16 weeks paid paternity leave, which is equal in length and generosity to maternity leave entitlements. Our research design allows us to analyze the distribution of care work among parents in cohorts before and after the extension of paternity leave, as well as the possible changes in attitudes regarding gender roles that may have occurred. We analyze participation in care and household work during the first three months, the second three months, a year after and two years after birth. In addition, we analyze the effects on the ‘mental burden’ at a year and two years after birth. Social class is introduced to identify heterogenous effects. We exploit this variation in the length of paternity leave in a sample of 4,100 parents of children born before and after the reform (2018-2022). The survey investigates the distribution of care between mothers and fathers before and after the reforms, as well as attitudes towards gender roles.Preliminary results indicate a positive effect of longer paternity leave on fathers’ involvement in care work during the first three months after a child’s birth. However, this effect is short lived and disappears when fathers return to work.

Research suggests that growing up with a sibling with a disability may substantially affect individuals’ social, demographic, and economic trajectories, often leading to life course disadvantages. However, findings are scarce and based on small convenience samples. This study explores life course trajectories from adolescence to early adulthood (such as educational outcomes, leaving of the parental home, family formation, and health) of individuals who grew up with a sibling with a (sensual, physical or cognitive) disability. Using full-population Finnish register data, we compare the life course outcomes of those who grew up with a sibling with a disability with their counterparts who did not, matching on individual and family sociodemographic characteristics. We envision siblings of disabled individuals to be polarized in their outcomes, either being highly performing or very vulnerable. Our study will be the first to provide a comprehensive overview of how demographic processes may be influenced by disabilities in the family and thereby will make a significant contribution to understanding the far-reaching family consequences of disability.

Research shows that early-life gendered work-family trajectories affect cognitive health at older ages and that this is contingent on the broader cultural and institutional context in which individuals are embedded – namely, the welfare state. Yet, there is little research explaining why different trajectories are associated with cognitive health. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by unpacking the relationship between work-family life courses and late-life cognitive functioning, focusing on three different explanatory mechanisms: material well-being, physical and mental health, and social connectedness. Using mediation analyses on longitudinal (prospective and retrospective) data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we aim to investigate the causal links between men’s and women’s work and family trajectories and cognitive functioning across four institutional contexts: Sweden, Netherlands, France, and Italy. Preliminary results suggest that lifetime employment participation and family roles are associated with better cognitive functioning, but the benefits are gender-specific and depend on the welfare context. Additionally, our findings indicate partial mediation of the relationship between work-family trajectories and cognitive health by economic resources, social connectedness, and physical and mental health, especially among women with weak labour market attachment. These insights underscore the importance of gender-specific analyses and highlight the potential of policy interventions to enhance cognitive functioning in ageing populations through economic and social support. In further developing this study, we will delve deeper into the moderating role of welfare systems, examining how economic and family roles differently influence cognitive health across welfare contexts.

In ageing societies, the increasing share of older adults places significant care burdens on family members, who experience negative consequences on psychological and physical health, and social isolation. These adverse effects have to do with time use restrictions because of the time priority required by caregiving. Caregivers often cut on labour market involvement, sleeping, and social activities and relationships they previously enjoyed. Despite extensive research, the socioeconomic disparities in caregiver experiences remain underexplored. For example, more disadvantaged individuals could suffer the most from caregiving, having limited possibilities to ‘buy time for themselves’ by purchasing services on the market. Our study, using data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, 2020), investigates how health shocks to partners (i.e., exogenous shocks leading to increasing demands for informal caregiving, such as the onset of dementia, hip fracture, stroke) influence caregivers' daily activities; and how socioeconomic characteristics moderate this relationship. Preliminary results show that care responsibilities influence the caregiver’s time expenditure, with heterogeneity across gender and socio-economic status. The most affected by a partner’s health shock are men at the bottom of the income distribution and women at the top. When having an impaired partner, the former spend more time in household chores and cut on leisure activities, while the latter sleep less at night and cut on paid work. In conclusion, it is essential to understand which individuals face the consequences of caregiving and reiterate the importance of a social infrastructure supporting families caring for their dependent family members.

High engagement of grandparents in care provision across Europe have attracted much scholarly interest regarding its impact on cognition. However, with increasing female participation in the labor market and postponement of retirement age, more grandparents find themselves taking on overlapping roles in the labor market and as caregiving grandparents. Role enhancement and role strain theories raise questions about whether cognitive functioning benefits or is undermined by such a double engagement. The contribution of our study is twofold: First, we explore cognitive outcomes in relation to combinations of activity status (working, retired, or other) and levels of grandchild care (no provision, non-intensive, and intensive) among adults aged 50+. Second, we consider heterogeneities in these associations across European regions. Exploiting longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we estimate linear growth curve models to examine the effect of grandchild care on cognitive functioning across grandparents’ activity status. We account for the gendered nature of grandparenthood by conducting separate analyses for men and women. Preliminary findings point at gender and context heterogeneities: grandchild care provision, particularly when it is non-intensive, may be beneficial for episodic memory. By contrast, grandparents are more likely to report poor episodic memory in the context of retirement. However, this negative effect of retirement is counterbalanced by grandchild care provision, but only when it is intensive. Furthermore, this holds true only for grandfathers in Eastern Europe and grandmothers in Central Europe. Further steps include robustness checks and investigations of sub-group heterogeneities.

This study addresses the gap in understanding the relationship between conflict-induced violence (CIV) and forced migration, focusing on the significance of CIV's intensity, proximity, and type. Leveraging a motivations–capabilities framework, we offer insights into forced migration in response to CIV, challenging prevailing notions about demographic selectivity and migration patterns. Using dynamic models and unique comparative data from the OneUA project, on Ukrainian women who stayed in Ukraine and those residing in eight countries in Europe, we examine their migration patterns in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Our findings reveal a positive curvilinear relationship between CIV and migration propensity: increased violence heightens migration up to a threshold, beyond which its impact diminishes. We observe varying influences of CIV types, with indirect and forewarning threats more significantly affecting migration decisions than direct threats. Additionally, while violence acts as a catalyst for vulnerable groups to migrate, thereby narrowing demographic disparities in migration propensity, individuals with higher education or economic resources maintain distinct advantages, perpetuating inequality in escape opportunities. Notably, a preference for internal resettlement over international migration emerges in response to higher CIV. These insights contribute to understanding the nuanced dynamics of forced migration amidst conflict-induced violence.

Many knowledge-based economies are facing growing needs for skilled labour due to ageing populations, unsustainable fertility rates, and the ongoing green and digital transitions. Governments therefore increasingly depend on highly skilled immigrants in particular to respond to these challenges. However, highly skilled immigrants are probably more at risk of leaving their current country of residence compared to their lower-skilled counterparts. Empirical evidence suggests that highly skilled immigrants react comparably stronger to unmet migration expectations as their expectations to do well, fare well and be treated equally are particularly high, thus being more prone to be disappointed. Being highly qualified and more likely to cope with monetary and psychological consequences of migration decisions, such disappointment might lead them to pursue alternative career perspectives elsewhere in the global labour market, eventually making them leave the country. Here we analyse how unmet migration expectations of immigrants affect the probability of leaving their current destination country, and whether there are educational differences. We use panel data of recent immigrants to Switzerland from the Swiss Migration-Mobility (MMS) Survey and link them with administrative data to obtain information on immigrants’ whereabouts after being surveyed. Overall, we find that disappointed migration expectations increase the probability of immigrants to leave the country after the survey. Highly skilled immigrants are generally more likely to leave Switzerland than lower skilled immigrants. Importantly, however, we find that the stronger the migration disappointment, the greater is the likelihood of out-migration for highly skilled immigrants, making them particularly likely to leave.

Individuals with a migration background display higher migration propensities than those without. On the one hand, having a migration background can facilitate migration through the intergenerational transmission of relevant resources, such as transnational networks, multilingualism and cultural identity. On the other, direct experience of migration, especially in childhood, can shape attitudes towards migration and prepare individuals for further migration. In this article, we study how migration background and migration experience interact in affecting migration intentions, distinguishing between return(roots) and onward migration. We use data from the 2019-2020 French survey Trajectoires et Origines 2 to investigate differences in return and onward migration intentions by family migration background and direct experience of migration in childhood and in adulthood. Preliminary results show that second- and first-generation individuals are more likely to intend to migrate in future compared to 3+ or 2.5 generation individuals. However, the higher migration intentions of first- and second- generation individuals are mostly driven by return migration intentions, whereas 3+generation individuals have the highest share of onward migration intentions. Having experienced migration in childhood is associated with higher onward migration intentions across all groups except for the second generation. In the latter, childhood migration experience is associated with higher return migration intentions. In future developments of the article, we will look into mechanisms mediating these associations. This research enhances our comprehension of migration by adopting a perspective that regards migration as a recurring and self-reinforcing process throughout the life course and across generations.

Residential movement decisions are complex, shaped by life course events and macro circumstances. Most residential moves take place during the phase of family formation, but the number of moves, distance and reason vary across individuals. When movements also involve geographical displacement, educational and/or occupational attainments may follow, but -depending on the distance-, they may also undermine situated social support networks like friendship and kin that strongly contribute to later life circumstances in southern European societies. With retrospectively collected data from the first wave of Italian Lives (ITA.LI), a representative household panel survey of the Italian population (16+), we dynamically describe the patterns of residential (im)mobility relative to the municipality of ‘origin’ at schooling age. Using sequence analysis and clustering techniques, we detect typical patterns of residential mobility through the extent and frequency of moves from and towards the location of residence at age 14, when essential social networks have been grounded in school and early life. We then explore associates of the current housing characteristics with indicators from earlier geographical mobility and salient family circumstances (e.g. social origin, union disruption) to assess differences of various residential mobility trajectories over the life course in relation to housing outcomes. We find that having experienced a divorce is associated with a higher risk of housing deprivation but not widowhood. All else equal, higher risk if also for those who moved earlier in the same municipality, never left the place of origin, are long-distance movers (> 400 km) or have made repeated moves.

There is no doubt that replication studies make an important contribution to the collective good of trust in science and the reliability of scientific results. Publication bias, “winner’s curse” effect and questionable research practices increase the risk of false positive findings in published research. As with collective good production in general, selective incentives are required to encourage researchers to conduct replication studies. However, there are also problems with replication studies. As with any study based on statistical reasoning and significance testing, replication studies can be flawed due to alpha- and beta errors. It is easy to calculate how replications affect the probability that a significant coefficient reported in an original study can be classified as false positive. On the other hand, there is also the probability that replication studies provide false negative results. Apart from statistical calculations, replication studies can also be affected by the fact that the replication study does not fully match the experimental protocol of the original study. We will discuss a case study in which the replications failed because an important factor that was relevant to the emergence of the effect in the original study was not taken into account in several replication studies. The case study reminds us that one should be cautious about premature conclusions from replication studies.

The academic social sciences face growing concerns regarding uncertainty levels in research estimates, particularly researcher-induced uncertainty explored in prominent papers. An essential aspect of this issue is the sensitivity of estimates to diverse model specifications, encompassing various 'control' variables and analytical choices. To address this sensitivity, researchers commonly compute all conceivable specifications, presenting them in a curve to illustrate output space variability in absolute values and statistical significance variations—termed 'multiverse analysis' when assessing different 'researcher degrees of freedom' or 'specification-curve analysis' for exclusive specification considerations. Researchers often resort to ad-hoc routines or limited existing libraries, which could often lead to the introduction of other sources of error and bias.
This paper introduces Robustify, an accessible Python library designed to facilitate advanced multiverse analysis, offering numerous new features. The library aims to deliver standard, stable, and highly reproducible methods through a user-friendly interface. Robustify addresses the limitations of existing routines, providing researchers with a reliable tool for multiverse/specification-curve analysis, enhancing the quality and stability of results, and ultimately contributing to more robust research practices.

The idea of sharing research data in economics is verifiable almost 100 years old. However, journals started only slowly in formal adopting of policies on research data into their guidelines. Up to date there is no study documenting on larger scale this development. In this paper we contribute by chronological overview of research data policies adoption among the 110 top academic journals in economics using variety of sources and attempting for high precision in policy introductions and changes. In the second part of the paper we quantify, in a panel regression framework, the effect of the policy introduction on replication incidenceoutcome. Our findings show that the research data policy leads on average to an additional replicated article every 5 years. The effect doubles for top journals and for journals with high levels of policy compliance. Most effects materialize only when availability of research data becomes a requirement for publication.

The current best practice in ‘Open’, ‘Reproducible’ and ‘Responsible’ research is to hide the variation caused by pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) through the arbitrary use of a ‘seed’ or ‘random state’ in algorithmic pipelines. However, in the process of doing so, we argue that researchers index into the scientific record an insurmountable amount of outcomes with seeming certainty, when they are in fact anything from certain: eliminating this variation is the opposite of what responsible researchers and practitioners should be doing. PNRGs are almost ubiquitous in some research areas -- occurring in a large proportion of quantitative and computational research designs -- and the potential variation in the estimand or outcome of interest is hitherto significantly under-appreciated. We undertake a series of substantial replication projects of highly published work, primarily in the form of Monte Carlo simulations, Machine Learning, and more traditional inferential designs. We show just how large the variation caused by the instantiation of PRNGs can be. We conclude with recommendations on how to embrace this variation for the betterment of scientific society, and how to responsibly conduct research designs which legitimately reduce it where possible.

Previous research has produced mixed evidence on the relationship between age and job satisfaction. Despite the broad consensus that job satisfaction generally rises from midlife to older ages, there is considerable controversy over whether it increases or decreases during the first half of an individual’s career span. Drawing on four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal labour market datasets that cover a total of 108,401 employees in the UK (the Skills and Employment Survey, the Workplace Employee Relations Survey, the British Household Panel Survey, and the UK Household Longitudinal Study), this study shows that only employees in professional and technical occupations experience a U-shaped job satisfaction trajectory over their working lives. In contrast, job satisfaction increases linearly with age for those who work in elementary or routine office occupations.
This study contributes to resolving a longstanding puzzle in the job satisfaction literature by revealing significant variations in the association between age and job satisfaction across occupations. While many studies suggest a U-shaped relationship between age and job satisfaction, our findings challenge this as a universal truth. Such a pattern is not consistent across all jobs, implying that the commonly referenced 'mid-career crisis' cannot be purely attributed to inherent biological changes associated with aging. Rather, our study highlights the importance of the occupational context for shaping how people experience their work as they grow older.

Research shows that the ideal worker norm, the masculine-gendered expectation of unlimited work devotion, perpetuates class and gender inequality and negatively impacts job satisfaction, turnover rates, and work-life conflict. Research in occupational settings remains underdeveloped as most of the existing literature highlights cross-sectional differences. Moreover, studies typically use measures like the mean hours of overtime, which do not fully capture the complexity and multidimensionality of this norm. This study argues for a more comprehensive approach to measure it in occupations by: (1) Accounting for the evolving nature of this norm through historical trend analysis; (2) including employer’s norms captured through job advertisements; and (3) incorporating the masculine-centric nature of this norm. Another innovative element is the juxtaposition of this norm with the work-life balance norm. We demonstrate the inclusion of these diverse aspects by means of multilevel factor analysis. We use rich supply and demand-side data from Switzerland collected from 2002 to 2020 and matched at the occupational level. The validity of our indicators is supported by (1) the fit measures of their factor analyses, (2) their correlations with previously used indicators and with part-time and gender pay gaps and (3) their association with preferences for part-time work as estimated by Random Effects Within Between models. By adopting this nuanced, occupation-specific, and historical lens and leveraging job ads data, our research provides novel avenues for better analysing, understanding, and addressing the class and gender inequalities perpetuated or mitigated by (shifts in) the ideal worker and the work-life balance norm.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a marked rise in the incidence of working from home in many countries, which has stimulated interest in whether this work arrangement is beneficial or detrimental to workers. Whereas a number of studies have associated working from home arrangements with longer working hours and overtime, little is known regarding the question of how home workers perceive their working hours, and especially, to what extent their actual working hours correspond with their preferences. Using 22 waves of panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey covering the period 2001 to 2022, this study investigates the association between the extent of working from home and working time mismatches. We analyse both the likelihood of underemployment (that is, the desire to work more hours) and overemployment (that is, the desire to work fewer hours). Furthermore, we consider the moderating roles of gender and parenthood and investigate whether associations have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary results from fixed effects logistic regression models suggest that for both genders small shares of time worked from home are associated with an increased likelihood of overemployment compared to not working from home, whereas large shares of time worked from home are associated with an increased likelihood of underemployment. Overall, only women benefit from working from home in terms of a greater likelihood of achieving a working time match, and only when they work from home extensively.

This paper investigates the evolution of occupational differences in perceiving one's work as meaningful over 29 years (1991-2019). Meaningful work serves as a vital non-monetary reward from work, influencing individual experiences within and beyond the workplace, making it an integral component of job quality. While research primarily focuses on psychological aspects of work's perceived meaning, emphasizing individual distinctions, less attention has been given to the occupational class gradient. Technology-driven transitions from manual labor in production industries to professional and managerial occupations are reshaping work processes. Yet, little attention has been paid to how these transformations might impact the perception of meaningful work. The findings presented in this paper reveal a persistent occupational class gradient in the perception of work as meaningful. Generally, high-skilled workers tend to view their work as more meaningful, along with those engaged in caregiving professions. Additionally, there is a consistent overall negative trend in the perception of meaningfulness. The negative trend can partly be explained by a decrease in indicators of the quality of the work environment, especially a decreasing share of individuals experiencing their work as varied, significantly contributing to the negative trend. However, there are two exceptions to this negative trend: individuals, particularly females, engaged in managerial or manufacturing work exhibit positive or stable trends over time. This positive trend can be partly attributed to managers and manual workers perceiving their work as more diverse and having greater autonomy in their tasks. These findings underscore the potential of technological advancements and increased skill complexity in manufacturing jobs to enhance the perception of work's meaningfulness.

We aim to advance knowledge about policy synergies in navigating potential trade-offs between ecological and social objectives within contemporary European welfare states, focusing on public support for fossil fuel taxes. Departing from previous research relying on broader classifications of welfare states or indicators of social spending, we adopt an institutional approach that provides a more direct assessment of core regulative aspects of social policy. Using multilevel modeling and data from the European Social Survey and the Social Policy Indicators database, we find a positive relationship between the generosity of means-tested social assistance and support for increased fossil fuel taxes in a sample of 20 European countries. This link is particularly pronounced among individuals holding strong concerns for the welfare of others (self-transcendence human values). Our findings suggest that the welfare state can garner public support of increased climate policy mitigation by providing high levels of income protection to vulnerable groups.

Many scientists consider climate change the biggest environmental problem of our time. Multiple studies have shown that successful mitigation will need political as well as individual behavioral change. But how can we examine factors that affect the willingness to change behavior to reduce energy consumption and emissions?
We fielded a nationally representative survey throughout Germany containing a Factorial Survey Experiment, where we present respondents with multiple lifestyle vignettes. The benefit of this approach is the reduction of social desirability in answers and the possibility to obtain evaluations of multiple combinations of different factors, which leads to more realistic scenarios. We include multiple dimensions representing individual behavioral changes with a high potential to reduce emissions. Furthermore, we test whether the current lifestyle and the perception of which activities can help lessen emissions affect the willingness to change one’s lifestyle for climate mitigation. Moreover, since inequality is linked to climate change on many levels, we also examine whether priming the respondents on different aspects of this inequality influences their vignette ratings. This is realized by including a prime about either international, economic (within country), or generational inequality of climate change ahead of the vignette fraction.
Our results show which lifestyle changes receive the biggest support in the population, which individual factors positively affect the willingness to change to climate-friendly behavior, and whether the awareness of different aspects of inequality in climate change has an influence on respondents’ evaluations.

Climate change and environmental pollution are among the greatest challenges of our time, and the proportion of people who are sceptical about these issues has become a minority. However, environmental policies rarely generate consensus, especially when they impose costs on individuals. We contribute to the understanding of who is unwilling to pay for environmental protection, from the perspective of social and spatial stratification. We analyse individual-level data from two recent international surveys (the ISSP 2020 and the ESS 2016) in 13 European countries. We find large differences in people's willingness to pay higher taxes for environmental protection between socio-economic groups and between different locations: people in the 5th income quintile are 13 percentage points more likely to oppose such a decision, and 9 percentage points separate the likelihood for people living in big cities from those living in rural areas. These differences are only weakly mediated by individuals' concern for the environment and climate change beliefs. Finally, the intersection of the social and spatial dimensions of stratification helps to provide a more complete picture: those most willing to pay for environmental policies are not only part of the upper middle class, but also tend to live in big cities, rather than in more peripheral places.

Previous research indicate that most people believe in climate change and are concerned for it. However, only a minority is willing to accept individual costs to mitigate climate change. Therefore, recent research is studying mechanisms affecting individuals’ willingness to support climate policies and to engage in pro-environmental behaviours. This research aims at investigating first whether providing information about recent extreme weather events affect the willingness to accept cuts in the standard of living for mitigating climate change. Second, we test whether the effect varies according to the type of climate disaster mentioned (glacier collapse vs floods). Finally, we aim at assessing the heterogeneity of the effects according to some individual features that might moderate the priming effect of information about climate disaster. To answer our research questions, we employ two survey experiments included in the fifth and the sixth wave of the ResPOnsE COVID-19 data, collected in Italy respectively in 2022 and 2023. In addition to a control group, in the first experiment a randomized group of respondents was primed by randomly recalling the collapse of two glaciers in summer 2022 (Marmolada in Italy and Grand Combin in Switzerland), while in the second experiment the priming recalls the floods happened in the region Emilia-Romagna in spring 2023. Our preliminary results show that recalling an extreme weather event do affect the willingness to limit the standard of living to mitigate climate change, but the effect depends on the type of disaster considered.

Although social stratification research has extensively scrutinised the degree of educational inequality over generations, time, and countries, in our view, this literature faces three limitations: 1) The theoretical and normative conceptualisation of inequality of educational opportunity (IoP) is unsystematic; 2) previous research analysed single individual circumstances while disregarding their interactions and cumulative consequences; 3) it mainly covered developed Western countries. This work aims to overcome these limitations by providing a theoretically informed analysis of unfair inequalities in students’ academic performance by ascribed circumstances, drawing from Roemer’s (1998) normative theory. We pooled a big dataset comprising six waves (2003-2018) of the PISA study across 90 countries worldwide, reaching 3 million students. We adopt a novel machine learning approach—transformation trees—to estimate IoP and assess the relative importance of eight ascribed circumstances—i.e., gender, country of birth, language at home, geographical area and parental occupation and education, ranking them cross-nationally and over time. The share of unfair educational inequality (IoP) ranges from 10% to 30% over total achievement variation. There was no consistent pattern over time: in some countries, IoP increased, and in others, it stayed stable or reduced. The most significant ascribed circumstance affecting IoP is the father’s and mother’s occupation. Overall, we find a negative relationship between mean achievement at the country level and IoP, meaning there is no efficiency-equality trade-off. We discuss the implications of our methodological approach and findings for the normative conceptualisation and measurement of (in)equality of educational opportunity in social stratification research.

While prior research consistently identified an educational premium among older generations of LGB individuals, recent evidence uncovered variations by gender, identities, contexts, and cohorts. This study investigates how the relationship between sexual identity and education has evolved over time in the UK and aims to explain variations in this premium by contextualizing the mechanisms outlined in previous literature. Using data from Understanding Society, we found support for a stable educational premium over time for gay men and a decreasing one for lesbian women. Subsequently, we used two birth cohort studies (BCS70 and Next Steps) to gain insight into how the school, family and individual context during adolescence changed across cohorts and may have affected the attainment of various groups differently. Based on these observations, we suggest that the diminishing educational premium among lesbian women could be linked to increased visibility combined with the persistence of traditional gender norms.

India has experienced massive economic growth and educational expansion, but has its social mobility increased in the last decades? To address this question, we examine the sibling similarity in educational attainment in the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI, 2017-19) for the birth cohorts from the 1960's to the 1990's. Sibling correlations are a broad measure of social mobility that captures both observed as well as unobserved aspects of the family background and are thus better suited than parent--offspring correlations, which can only draw on observed information. The sibling correlation in education in India is around .7, considerably higher than in most European countries. We find no discernable trend towards lower sibling correlations in education across birth cohorts. The highest sibling correlation is found among Muslims in India, the lowest among those from highly-educated families. We discuss implications in the context of incomplete revolutions and explain future plans for out study.

In this paper, we test the effect of repeated text message reminders to a randomly selected group of upper secondary students in Denmark designed to increase their application rate into HE by comparing them to a non-treated control group. The text messages were reminders of application deadlines including a link to the centralized application system. Studying the effects of the reminder campaign in the Danish context is advantageous for two reasons: Firstly, remembering the application deadline would be considered a minor obstacle in the process of HE enrollment in countries with substantial tuition fees, complicated application systems or in countries with various heterogeneous postsecondary education alternatives. However, in Denmark, a Scandinavian country with a universalistic welfare system, these larger concerns might be less salient. With a few exceptions all HE is tuition-free and universal student financial aid is available to all students irrespective of their family background. In 2022 all students not living at home with their parents’ place receive approximately 860 euro per month to cover most of their living expenses while studying. Furthermore, the application process in Denmark is comparatively easy. Testing our reminder intervention in a country like Denmark thus allows us to isolate the effect of providing upper secondary graduates with reminders of deadlines on HE enrollment. Secondly, the transition from secondary school to HE is quite particular in Denmark because the majority of upper secondary graduates in Denmark postpones HE enrollment by taking one, two or even three and more gap years before applying for HE. In fact, only a small share of a graduating cohort does apply for HE immediately after graduation. In light of the prevalence of delayed transitions to HE in Denmark, sending out application deadline reminders to students who have left the school context might be relevant to reduce a potential fading out of HE intentions. Given that students in Denmark apply to HE in multiple years after completing upper secondary education, allow us to test treatment effects at multiple time points, after zero, one or two gap years, respectively. We also test whether the intervention has heterogeneous effects in relation to students' parental level of education and for enrollment into three distinct types of HE degree programs that vary in length and prestige (University, University College and Business Academy). 
 
We sent out eight text messages in total to approximately 2,500 students. By comparing treated to untreated students, results indicate that students that received text messages had a higher chance of applying for HE. Across all three years (2019-2021) the effect is only statistically significant at a .10-level. Looking at the year 2020 only, which is the year following high school graduation, the effect is larger than in the years 2019 and 2021 and is statistically significant at the .05-level indicating that on average additionally four percentage more students apply for HE compared to the control group in this year group. We find no heterogenous treatment effect with respect to students’ parental educational background nor the type of HE the students applied for. 

Unemployment insurance, disability insurance and social assistance, are benefit schemes that are vital inindividuals’ transitions from and to employment. While the majority of all recipients are on benefits onlyfor a short time, the majority at any given time consist of long-term or recurring recipients. The causes ofstructural benefit recipiency are however poorly understood. One potential mechanism is a negative feedback loop of social capital and benefit recipiency. Many studies have explored the impact of social capital on employment. Furthermore, research on unemployment scarring indicates the existence of a negative effect of benefit recipiency on social capital. Following these two schools of thought, we expect a reciprocal relationship between social capital and benefit recipiency.Examining a sample of 3,774 individuals and 21,234 person-year observations between 2007 and 2019 from linked survey (LISS panel) and Dutch register data, we employ random-intercept cross-lagged panel models in a structural equation modelling framework to investigate the reciprocal relationship of social capital and benefit recipiency. These data allow us to identify short benefit recipiency spells, which are often missed in similar research, consider individuals’ history of benefit recipiency before our observation window and examine non-claimants, i.e. individuals that are eligible for social assistance but do not receive any benefits. Preliminary results indicate that benefit recipiency lowers social capital but that social capital does not affect benefit recipiency after introducing controls. These findings could have important implications for our theoretical understanding of the relationship between social capital and benefit recipiency.

It is well known that special payments are distributed much more unequal than regular earnings. Moreover, inequality in regular wages has decreased in the last decade in Germany but total earnings inequality remained on a high level. We hence test the hypothesis that special payments have become more important for inequality in annual earnings and examine what has driven the changing relation between regular earnings and special payments. We consider two sets of main drivers for these changes: 1) The fundamental change of labour market institutions ensuing from the introduction of a minimum wage 2) current social transformation processes and crises that have fostered conflicts over the distribution of labour income. We thus empirically examine the research question, how labor market institutions and structural changes in the composition of workers and firms have influenced the distribution of annual regular earnings and special payments in the period from 2014 to 2022.

Non-take-up of targeted cash benefits is a well-known phenomenon in most countries, and it is one of the main problems they present when it comes to effectively eliminating (or reducing) child poverty. The most usual explanations for non-take-up are lack of information (on the benefit itself, or on one’s eligibility), transaction costs, and stigma. However, the reasons behind this phenomenon in the specific case of child benefits, as well as their relative importance, are not completely clear. This project aims to provide reliable evidence on the reasons for non-take-up in the specific case of the Spanish Minimum Vital Income (IMV) child benefit, thus helping to design better intervention mechanisms to minimize it. This case entails a particularly complex puzzle, since the eligibility thresholds for the benefits are well above the poverty line, benefits are flat-rate, amounts are not low, and several information campaigns have been launched. However, although more than half of the population under 18 should be eligible, take-up hardly reaches 20%. In his paper, we present the results of an original experimental survey to identify the reasons for this high level of non-take-up in child benefits, and to test three informational nudges aimed to reduce it. Our main hypothesis is that, beyond the usual explanations, there is also a “labelling” effect by which middle-income families and families with income close to the poverty line are prevented from applying for the benefit, since the child benefit is built into a minimum income program targeted to the extremely poor.

Income inequality has long been considered to be largely due to social class differences between individuals. However, recent literature shows that, far from being a perfect indicator of lifetime earnings, social class represents equally age-varying social position, particularly in younger cohorts, for whom both income inequality and career class mobility increase over time. This presentation aims at examining the missing link between career class mobility and earning trajectories by focusing on the case of France. To do so, it uses data from the cross-sectional French survey Formation-Qualification Professionnelle (Insee, 2014-2015) merged with the panel register data “panel tous salariés” collecting information on yearly job changes and earnings of the survey respondents employed in public and private sector in France. More specifically, the presentation aims at (1) describing the link between class and earning trajectories, (2) investigating to which extent its gendered character accounts for the wage gap between men and women, and (3) exploring how career class mobility shapes the distance between different social positions in terms of work-related income. By looking at unequal wage returns to mobility, this presentation will help to better understand or recall why the study of mobility in social stratification research is important after all.

Intergenerational mobility has been a focal point in sociological research, with recent attention on the role of individual behavioral biases for their life chances, particularly aspirations. In explaining how children’s aspirations develop, research commonly relies on measures of social origin, schooling environment and individual attributes. A consistent finding in the literature is the association between socioeconomic status and income of parents and their children’s occupational aspirations, commonly assessed on income and prestige scales. However, the link between parents’ occupation and the specific occupations that children aspire to has received less attention. This study analyses children’s aspirations at the occupational level, surpassing conventional social origin and aspiration measures. Examining the formation of children’s occupational aspirations on the micro-class level (Jonsson et al. 2009), this paper emphasizes the distinct influence of parent’s occupation on children’s aspirations and the subjective nature of how children form aspirations. We argue that the varying extents of how children grow up, what resources they inherit, how they think about themselves and how they perceive the occupational system, imply patterns within occupational aspirations that are worth investigating. Utilizing recent data from the National Educational Panel Study for Germany, we apply a mobility networks perspective and the corresponding statistical model (Block et al. 2022) to uncover patterns within aspirations formation. Preliminary findings underscore the occupational specificity of children’s occupational aspirations, challenging the notion that income and prestige alone directs their career aspirations. The paper further contributes to understanding of the role of parent’s occupations in shaping children’s occupational aspirations.

The occupational aspirations of children have been found to depend on children’s social origins. However, it remains unclear what in an occupation is valued more by which children. Previous research has focused on predicting aspirations in terms of aspired socioeconomic status (SES) rather than predicting the actual aspired occupation. By doing so it cannot explain whether aspirations are stratified because 1) children from higher social origins have a stronger preference for occupations with high SES or because 2) they have a stronger preference for certain types of occupations regardless of the occupation's SES. This study seeks to address this gap by assessing which occupational characteristics increase or lower the probability that a given occupation is aspired. In this regard, occupational stereotypes are argued to play a central role. Stereotypes are a crucial source of information when children form their aspirations. Additionally, varying social origins may affect the way children evaluate those stereotypes contributing to the stratification of aspirations. By leveraging word embeddings to map over 10000 occupation titles in a cultural space, I measure their stereotypical images. This information alongside SES and Swiss data on occupational aspirations is used to estimate conditional logit models predicting occupational aspirations. These models allow me to assess which occupational characteristics are most influential for occupational aspirations and whether their influence depends on children’s social origin. By delving into occupational stereotypes in addition to SES, this study aims to illuminate the nuanced factors contributing to the stratification of children's occupational aspirations.  

Argentina is a particularly interesting case for the comparative study of social reproduction and social mobility. The country is almost unique in being on a steady downward slope from riches to rags. In the early 20th century Argentina was among the top-10 wealthiest countries in the world, due to its immense agricultural exports and early industrial development, which at the time made the country a major attraction to immigrants from then impoverished Southern Europe. Since then Argentina has been in a steady downward development, punctuated by eight national bankruptcies between 1930 and 2002, and the country finds itself now in the lower ranks of developing economies, with a per capita national income of about 25% of the wealthy OECD countries.
Standard modernization theory would lead to the expectation that the permanent (but incomplete) economic crisis has produced a rigidification of the social class structure. Despite the pioneering early work of Gino Germani (early 1960’s) and its obvious relevance, Argentina is at present largely absent from international comparisons of social stratification and social reproduction. In this paper we aim to mend this gap by investigating intergenerational occupational class reproduction and status attainment in first jobs for cohorts that entered the labour market between 1930 and 2020.
We have brought together eight surveys (among them the 1960 Germany survey) with data on first and father’s occupation, that allow us to compare cohorts that entered the labour market between 1930 and 2020. The eight surveys are heterogeneous by sample coverage and measurement strategies, but we can overcome this by employing survey quality controls. We distinguish 10 occupational class categories, based in the major group of the International Classification of Occupations ISCO-88/08 and study the pattern of association with the Hauser-Goodman [HG] multiplicative scaled association model, that we incorporate in a conditional logistic regression model, that makes it possible to add individual level covariates and address indirect effects (FOCC à EDUC à OCC1) as well as confounding by the survey controls. The HG model compresses the association pattern into two sociologically meaningful parameters: IMM, the excess density on the diagonal of the mobility tables, and U, the scaled uniform association parameter that models the intergenerational status transmission among the intergenerationally mobile. We study these parameters by entry cohort for men and women separately and jointly, and with and without correction for survey effects.
Our preliminary result rebuts the expectation of a growing rigidification of Argentina: in fact, there is a trend towards more (relative) mobility and this trend become more pronounced when the appropriate survey controls are taken into account. The trend towards more relative mobility is most pronounced on the diagonal (IMM) but is also visible off-diagonal. When examined in an indirect effects model, the primary channel of increased relative mobility is the indirect one, via education.

This research investigates intergenerational social mobility, considering the influence of cognitive and non-cognitive skills on educational and occupational outcomes. Using data from the 1958 Birth Cohort, the study explores the associations of these skills with educational attainment at 33 and occupational social class at 42, adjusting for parental education and gender. Cognitive skills are measured through reading and math ability tests, while non-cognitive skills are assessed using various behavioral and attitude indicators. The study extends the analysis by incorporating genetic measures of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, exploring their independent impact on social mobility. Additionally, a correction method for Polygenic Indexes (PGI) is introduced to address their limitations in estimating genetic predisposition accurately. The findings reveal gender-specific patterns, emphasizing the significant influence of both observed and genetic skills on educational and occupational outcomes, surpassing the impact of parental background and gender. The study contributes to the scholarly debate by providing a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in intergenerational social mobility.

Research suggests motherhood’s impact on women’s careers varies by parity and timing asearlier first births and career interruptions impose greater career penalties. Existing studies haveprimarily focused on isolated outcomes, such as wages, neglecting broader consequences on overallcareer trajectories. Moreover, there is a research gap regarding the role of fertility intentions andof planning parenthood in mitigating adverse effects.This study introduces a novel approach to analyse career trajectories after parenthood, com-paring individuals who planned for parenthood with those who did not. Those who did not planfor parenthood often face simultaneous challenges, such as negotiating work-family reconciliation,childcare, and housing situations. Additionally, unplanned parenthood may be linked to unfavorablecareer timing. I investigate whether unplanned parenthood functions as an economic shock, asso-ciated with more episodes of precarious employment statuses, including unemployment, marginalemployment, and (prolonged) parental leave, thereby resulting in diminished lifetime earnings andhuman capital accumulation.Using pairfam data and sequence analysis, I consider intentions preceding pregnancy and cate-gorise parenthood status as either planned or unplanned, based on whether individuals expresseda desire for children. I address two questions: First, what factors are associated with (un)plannedparenthood? Second, does unplanned parenthood contribute to increased precarity in career tra-jectories?Preliminary findings indicate unplanned parenthood in 15.8% of first births, 10.1% of secondbirths, and 45.3% of third births, associated with lower age-at-parenthood and more precariouscareer trajectories. Gender differences emerge, as unplanned parenthood has minimal impact onmen but significant effects on women.

Do fertility desires among LGB people change as parenthood becomes more available and socially accepted across cohorts? This paper aims to provide a first answer to this question by using data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to study cohort and gender differences in fertility desires and expectations among LGB people. The analytical sample consists of 6601 LGB people and 141 286 heterosexual people. Gay and lesbian individuals provide 2992 person-years of information, bisexual people 3609 person-years and heterosexual people 141 286 person-years. Preliminary findings confirm findings from previous literature, indicating lower fertility desires for LGB people compared to heterosexual people. We observe a different pattern for LG and bisexual people, where the former group displays a significantly lower parenthood desire. The inclusion of cohorts in the analysis provides several novel findings: while parenthood desires increased across cohorts for lesbian women, the share of respondents indicating fertility desires slightly decreased across birth cohorts for gay men. Interestingly, we also observe a larger share of lesbian women that have children in the younger cohort, while the opposite is found for gay men. In short, the unprecedented focus of this paper on cohort differences provides novel insights to the current demographic debate on fertility aspirations and on the life courses of the LGBTQ+ population.

This paper examines how the relationship between income of couples and fertility has changed over the last 25 years in Norway. While researchers have long recognized that “it takes two to tango”, little is known about the separate roles of couples’ economic resources for childbearing, and even less about how it has changed over recent decades. Previous research typically used measures of either income or employment (the latter mainly as a proxy for the former). We disentangle the role of earnings from the effects of involvement in paid work for both partners. Thus, a central aim of this study is to unpack the “black box” of Beckerian income- and substitution-effects across recent decades in Norway.
We use Norwegian register data on opposite-sex couples followed over 1995-2019. We estimate birth-order-specific hazard models. To understand how changes in the role of incomes and involvement in paid work for childbearing contributed to declining fertility in Norway, we include interactions between these variables and period effects.
We find that - net of the role of involvement in paid work - incomes of both partners play an important role for childbearing. Couples with incomes in top quintiles have higher conditional probabilities to have (another) child compared to couples with lower incomes. Women’s incomes matter as much as incomes of their male partners. Moreover, we do not find any evidence that income differentials in childbearing have changed over time, meaning that higher incomes continue to provide better conditions for having children in Norway.

Reproduction represents a complex phenomenon as it involves intertwined biological and social processes. Reproduction experiences and outcomes are socially stratified, with less advantaged women having a higher risk of adverse outcomes. In the context of delayed fertility, the combined effect of late motherhood with the biological limits of fertility might exacerbate the already existing inequality in reproductive outcomes. Moreover, nonreproductive outcomes have become a substantive part of reproductive careers. Indeed, access to reproduction might suffer from social stratification too (e.g., the chances of recognizing infertility or affording assisted reproductive techniques).
In the current study, we analyze possible channels of inequality in both nonreproductive and reproductive outcomes, in a context of persistent low and late fertility such as Spain. Combining data from the last wave of the Spanish Fertility Survey (2018) with Spanish register data (2010-2021) to investigate whether (1) the reasons behind unwanted childlessness, and (2) delivery and birth outcomes are socially stratified according to women’s education levels.
We find a barrier at the entrance of motherhood, with less advantaged women showing a higher likelihood of reporting fertility or health issues as reasons for unwanted or unachieved fertility. For both birth and delivery outcomes, we find a persistent gap over time with high-educated women showing a consistently lower likelihood of adverse birth and delivery outcomes over time. 

Sweden has a long history of receiving refugees. Scholars have found that refugees experience disparities in socioeconomic outcomes relative to the native-born population. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the socioeconomic prospects of native-born children of refugees (the second generation, G2). While the extent of adaptive patterns existing among the G2 in general has been researched, little is known about the G2 children of refugees, despite the additional obstacles faced by their parents. In addition to increased risks of poorer health, one of these obstacles is the fact that refugees typically have fewer opportunities to determine where they live.
Using longitudinal register data of the Swedish population, we apply advanced regression techniques to compare outcomes of persons born between 1990 and 2005.  We investigate whether the educational outcomes of the G2 children of refugees in Sweden are influenced by their residential location. We also examine the impact of the area-level education (general educational level of residents in an area), as well as the migrant/refugee student compositions on educational outcomes. Comparisons are made between the G2 children of refugees and the Swedish-born children of Swedish-born parents, as well as with foreign-born children of refugees. Country of origin differentials are also explored.
The study provides insights that can inform the under-researched patterns of adaptation for the G2 children of refugees.  It adds to the research on systematic inequality and linkages between inequality and segregation. Our results demonstrate how patterns of inequality vary. We suggest possible consequences and propose suggestions for further research.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered an unprecedented wave of Ukrainian refugees seeking safety outside their country, constituting the largest movement of Ukrainian citizens since World War II. Over one million Ukrainian refugees officially registered in Germany as of 2022.
In our study, we explore the dynamics following the refugees’ arrival in Germany. We investigate whether a positive integration into German society within the first year and a half after Ukrainian refugees’ arrival increases their intentions to stay in Germany and, conversely, if strong intentions to stay contribute to greater integration. Despite its importance, this nexus remains relatively unexplored. Its investigation provides valuable insights into the determinants of integration and settlement intentions, shedding light on the factors influencing Ukrainian refugees' decisions regarding both settlement and integration.
In our analysis, we employed a representative longitudinal survey of Ukrainian refugees who arrived after February 2022 in Germany and conducted autoregressive cross-lagged analyses.
Our results yielded two main preliminary findings. First, Ukrainian refugees’ intentions to stay in Germany were hardly predictive of their integration. Second, integration into German society did not affect Ukrainians’ settlement intentions at later time points. Thus, our study suggests that factors shaping Ukrainians' settlement intentions extend beyond societal integration and that their integration progresses independently of their settlement intentions. This research enhances the current understanding of refugee settlement and integration, providing valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners working towards facilitating a successful settlement and integration of Ukrainian refugees into German society.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 produced the largest population displacement in Europe since World War II. The bombing campaign led around 14 million people to flee their homes, either remaining within Ukraine or leaving Ukraine altogether. These different responses raise questions about how the experience of violence impacts distance travelled and decisions to cross an international border, and whether this differs by key characteristics, such as education and family structure.
To answer these questions, we use a rapid health-needs survey administered via Facebook from April-July 2022. The survey targeted Ukrainians over age 18 who had left home since February 2022. In total, 8400 participants – 40.9% IDPs and 59.1% refugees – completed the survey. We use multi-nomial logit models to analyse 5 categories of distance moved, including abroad to a bordering or non-bordering country, and the West, Centre/West, and South/East within Ukraine.
Preliminary results indicate key factors for understanding distance moved. Those who spoke Russian at home were more likely to move abroad, to non-bordering states, or stay close to home in the Centre or South of the country. Russian speakers were also more likely to express a feeling of uncertainty about their next destination and a lack security. Those who witnessed a blast explosion were less likely to move abroad or make a long distance move, suggesting that those most exposed to violence have become IDPs, rather than refugees.

This paper presents an original investigation of class-origin wealth gaps across European countries. The study employs a modified socioeconomic attainment model to theorize distinct paths of influence from parental occupational social class to wealth attainment. Empirically, it examines how societal class rigidity in wealth correlates at the macro level with corresponding intergenerational rigidities in educational attainment, income distribution, and wealth transmission. Utilizing EU-SILC data for 31 countries (2005, 2011, 2019), the analysis focuses on individuals aged 40-55, measuring wealth gaps between top-class and middle/working-class families. Wealth attainment is gauged through household-level property income. Results reveal the existence of wealth gaps across European countries, with variations observed between top-middle and top-bottom gaps. The study concludes that wealth attainment is significantly stratified by parental class. Across countries, these disparities align with class inequalities in education, income, and wealth transfers. Findings contribute to comparative wealth inequality literature, highlighting its inteconnectedness with established socioeconomic inequalities.

Homeownership depends strongly on social origin, but the underlying mechanisms of this association are not well understood. This study evaluates how much of the differences in homeownership by social origin can be attributed to wealth transfers (gifts and inheritances). In addition to received transfers, we consider whether individuals expect to receive wealth transfers in the future. We use the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study and apply discrete time survival models to assess the importance of transfers for differences in homeownership by social origin. We find that individuals with high parental SES have a higher hazard rate of transitioning to homeownership, particularly those individuals whose parents have been business owners. Moreover, individuals with high parental SES are more likely to anticipate transfers, are more likely to receive transfers, and receive larger amounts. Individuals are much more likely to transition to homeownership immediately after receiving a gift or an inheritance. Yet, even individuals who have not yet received transfers, but anticipate that they will receive transfers in the future, are much more likely to become homeowners. At least 15%, and for some class contrasts up to 70%, of differences in the transition rate to homeownership by parental social class can be attributed to wealth transfers.

Several studies have documented parental wealth to be significantly associated with children’s occupational outcomes, as measured by ISEI and earnings, over and above other measures of parental SES and children’s education itself. However, most contributions observe children’s occupational outcomes in a single time point. This approach may not fully capture the role of parental wealth since its advantages tend to emerge later in children’s occupational careers. This work seeks to address this gap by examining the role played by parental wealth in shaping children’s earnings trajectories in the medium-long term in the US. Moreover, it investigates whether and how this relationship varies according to their educational level. Using data from the PSID, ranging between 1984 and 2021, we apply growth curve models to analyse children’s earnings trajectories over time. To deal with selection in educational attainment by parental wealth, models are computed separately by educational level  (No College/College).
Preliminary results show that parental wealth is positively associated with children's earnings trajectories. For those without a college degree, parental wealth is associated with higher earnings in the early years of their careers, but this association weakens and becomes not significant after the age of 30. For college graduates, the relation between wealth and earnings is not significant in the initial years of their careers, but it becomes positive and statistically significant after the age of 27. The effect size monotonically increases leading to an expanding earnings gap by parental wealth over children’s occupational trajectories.

Homeownership is an important factor in the intergenerational transmission of advantages, but the existing literature has largely ignored the regional heterogeneity in the association between social origin and the transition to homeownership. This study compares the role of parental wealth for homeownership among young adults in urban and rural areas in two countries with very different housing regimes and welfare states: Germany and Norway. We use data from Norwegian registers and the German Socio-economic panel and employ event history analysis to evaluate the heterogeneity in the effect of parental wealth on young adults’ transition to first homeownership. Preliminary results for Germany indicate that the hazard for transitioning to first homeownership is almost four times higher for individuals with the most parental wealth compared to individuals with the least parental wealth. The association between parental wealth and transitioning to first homeownership is larger in urban regions than in rural regions.

An extensive literature documents social gradients in cultural tastes. However, we know less about how individuals, based on their taste preferences, select which cultural objects to engage with. Bourdieu argued that professional tastemakers i.e. cultural intermediaries like reviewers and critics are help the middle classes navigate cultural markets and identify which cultural products that are appropriate and prestigious to engage with. This paper studies who actually respond to quality signals from these tastemakers. I propose that occasional users, who aspire to be culturally active but are less embedded in a cultural practice, are particularly likely to use quality signals from reviews etc. to select cultural objects. In contrast, avid users should poses the cultural capital to select cultural objects independently. Empirically, I use a difference-in-differences approach and study the impact book reviews and awards on loans of library books from Danish public libraries. In contrast to the proposed hypotheses, I find that while occasional readers respond more than non-readers, avid readers contribute most to the increase in loans post review/award. These results challenge two important aspects about cultural distinction. First, individuals high in cultural capital have not refined their aesthetic dispositions to the point where they are independent of the guidance of cultural intermediaries. Second, cultural intermediaries primarily serve the culturally embedded and are not as important for shaping the cultural practices of the aspiring cultural consumers. The results then shift the importance of cultural intermediaries from serving culture to the masses, to enabling the cultural elite to direct abstract tastes towards the use of concrete cultural objects.

Theories of cultural stratification posit that highbrow cultural tastes are misrecognized as signals of high social rank and favorable personal traits. Misrecognition is a necessary condition for cultural tastes to act as cultural capital, i.e., generalized currency exchangeable into economic and social assets. Yet, we know little about whether a person’s cultural taste shapes misrecognition, measured via others’ perceptions of social rank and personal traits, and which taste domains (e.g., music, food, or performing arts) are particularly effective status signals. To address these limitations, we pre-registered and conducted a conjoint experiment in which a representative sample of the Danish adult population (N = 4,180) rated pairs of fictional individuals with different cultural tastes (in music, food, performing arts, leisure, sport, and literature) in terms of perceived social rank, competence, sociability, respectability and “polish.” Crucially, our experimental design makes it possible to isolate the effect of each dimension of taste (e.g., music vs. food) and to identify which dimension has the strongest impact on misrecognition. Because we also vary other status signals (gender, ethnicity, occupational status, and family background), our experiment provides a conservative test of whether cultural tastes act as signals of social rank and personal traits. Our empirical results show that, all else being equal, highbrow tastes have a positive effect on perceptions of social rank, competence, respectability, and polish, but a negative effect on perceptions of sociability. In further analyses, we find that tastes in music and food are the clearest signals, while tastes in sports and literature are less important. Yet, highbrow cultural tastes within all taste domains positively influence perceptions of polish, measured by being more or less “cultured.” Furthermore, pecuniary tastes (food and leisure) positively affect perceptions of competence, whereas non-pecuniary tastes (music and literature) do not. Overall, our results suggest that cultural tastes operate as signals of social rank and personal traits and that music and food tastes are the clearest status signals.

Over the last decades, research has increasingly focused on cultural tastes as an explanation for the formation and maintenance of social networks. Underlying these studies is the causal assumption that cultural tastes can be converted into social capital, i.e., gainful social networks. Yet, previous research has not addressed whether cultural tastes affect – as opposed to merely correlate with – social capital. In this paper, we combine three-generation data with three complementary identification strategies to assess if cultural tastes affect social capital. Specifically, we estimate the effect of cultural tastes on social capital in the third generation by (1) controlling for a rich set of observables in preceding generations (including social capital in the first and second generation), (2) comparing siblings in the third generation (i.e., family fixed effects design), and (3) instrumenting cultural tastes in the third generation with cultural tastes in the first and second generation (i.e., Instrumental-Variable design). Across identification strategies, we consistently find that cultural tastes have a positive effect on social capital, measured by access to gainful networks in local business, public administration, and politics. Interestingly, cultural tastes do not affect whether individuals themselves are well-positioned in these networks. We end the paper by discussing limitations in our research designs and prospects for future research.

The paper explores how social mobility shapes beliefs in meritocracy and the impact of contextual inequality. It builds on prior research by differentiating among individuals who do not experience mobility, accounting for gender differences in interpreting failure, and examining how contextual inequality moderates these associations.
Our first hypothesis posits that those who climb the social ladder are more likely to credit their success to personal ability and effort than structural factors. We also anticipate heterogeneous effects among non-mobile individuals, with those in advantaged positions leaning towards meritocratic explanations and those in disadvantaged positions favouring structural justifications.
We test these hypotheses by estimating hybrid multilevel models with country and period fixed effects with repeated cross-sectional ISSP survey data (1987, 1992, 2009 and 2019).
Results confirm our preliminary expectations. While overall moderation lacks statistical significance, intriguing gender patterns have emerged. Among men, results align with psychological theories, displaying a tendency to attribute failures externally during periods of rising economic inequality. In contrast, experiencing social mobility or being in an advantaged position reinforces the belief in meritocracy due to an augmented internal locus of control.
Findings regarding women warrant deeper investigation. We plan to explore whether they consider different reference points in their mobility trajectories, possibly focusing more on their mother’s occupation or the household's status in adulthood rather than their own occupation.

This paper analyses the spatial segregation in political voting behavior at the voting district (“neighborhood”) level in Germany. The degree of segregation versus integration is gauged by the extent to which local voting patterns diverge from overall, national-level voting patterns. If a neighborhood’s voting pattern resemble Germany's overall pattern, there is no segregation; conversely, if the neighborhood’s pattern strongly deviates from national trends, segregation is deemed high.
Small-scale political segregation matters because residents of segregated neighbourhoods may be more susceptible to democratic discontent, populism, affective polarization, and possibly even distrust in democratic elections. Thereby, party-political segregation may harm societal cohesion.
I analyze voting district-level results from the German federal elections from 1983 to 2021. With ~65,000 voting districts in 2021, this allows an extremely granular perspective. I compute local segregation measures and cluster neighborhoods using latent class analysis.
Findings reveal low levels of segregation primarily in midsized towns in Western Germany. Segregation is generally higher in Eastern Germany, where many neighborhoods belong the AfD-meets-the-Left cluster. Further, segregation tends to be higher in very rural areas, where there are many neighborhoods from the Conservative cluster. Highest levels of segregation are found in centric areas of large cities, where the Green-Left-cluster is widespread.
In broad, this work contributes to broader discussions on social cohesion, political polarization, and the urban-rural divide.

Plant disease epidemics are becoming more prevalent due to climate change, monoculture, and increased global connectivity, and inflict severe economic and social hardship on affected communities. Yet, little is known about their political consequences. We exploit the sudden and plausibly exogenous outbreak of the plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa, which exterminated centuries-old olive groves in the Italian region of Puglia starting in 2013, to examine the political consequences of plant disease epidemics. We combine quantitative difference-in-differences analysis of municipal-level data with qualitative fieldwork in affected municipalities using a novel case selection procedure. We find a 2.2-percentage-point excess vote share for far-right parties, document the outbreak's economic and socio-cultural consequences, and outline a mechanism rooted in a community narrative of abandonment by the state and ruling elites. Together, our findings reveal an important driver of support for the far right.

Discriminatory attitudes against racial and ethnic minorities are a key fault line for political and social divisions across and within countries. Accordingly, norms and laws sanction expressing such attitudes, which radical right parties (RRP) use to allege opinion suppression. Despite this plausible theoretical link between discriminatory attitudes and RRP electoral success, our understanding of the relationship is hampered by limitations inherent in the prevalent survey methodologies.
This paper proposes an innovative approach to address this. We use digital trace data, namely online searches, to evaluate the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes within and across 11 European countries. We first outline the promise of an indicator of discriminatory attitudes from online search data. Then, we describe the process of constructing and aligning it with survey data from two waves of the European and World Values Study and eight waves of the European Social Survey. Finally, we assess the regional prevalence of discriminatory attitudes with survey- and search-based measures and their association with RRP vote shares based on EU-NED and Manifesto Project data, using Eurostat data for regional sociodemographic indicators.
Preliminary results indicate marked differences in discriminatory attitudes between and within countries. However, the survey- and search-based measures reveal different distributions. This result, we argue, may be driven by country-specific desirability bias levels. We close by showing the search-based measure’s superior ability to predict RRP vote shares.
This paper illustrates an innovative sensitive-attitude measure, emphasizing its predictive potential, and contributes to our understanding of the role of discriminatory attitudes in RRP electoral successes.

One of the most puzzling phenomena in partisanship research is that women support radical right parties even though these parties tend to forward positions that severely curtail women's rights. Building upon discourse-theoretical analyses of radical right parties' strategies to mobilize female voters, we contend that sympathy for these parties among women may result from the simultaneous presence of societal norms of employment and care frequently described as `double socialization'. The insolvable dilemma between full employment and childcare produces perceptions of systemically unfair conditions in the labor market, which, lacking other ways of expression, incites women to support radical right parties.
We use multi-level logistic models to test whether regional variation in work- and care- norms as well as individual-level perceptions of economic strain, and the ability to find employment that caters to the needs of female employees can explain variation in women’s propensity to vote for right wing populist parties in Europe. Analyses are based on data from the European Social Survey round 9.
Our main analyses show that the probability to vote for RR and RWPs is slightly lower in regions where only one norm - either the work norm, or the care norm - is high. If both norms are high, the probability to vote for right-wing populist parties is, however, slightly but significantly increased. We also confirm that perceived financial strain and a lack of trust in a fair chance to find appropriate employment plays a significant role in women's decision to vote for right-wing populist parties.

Extant literature points to gender, parenthood, and social status of job applicants as crucial factors influencing employers’ hiring preferences and behaviours. However, little is known about whether and to what extent the intersection of these attributes leads to specific forms of discrimination in hiring. This study aims to fill this research gap by testing various hypotheses on the singular and intersectional influences of gender, parenthood, and social status. We implemented an original factorial survey experiment in which more than 2,500 UK-based recruiters evaluated the profiles of fictitious candidates for different job vacancies that varied in occupational level and gender composition. Our findings point to significant and substantial discrimination against mothers and in favour of high-status candidates, regardless of the job vacancy. Most interestingly, displaying signals of upper social status compensated for the negative effects of having a female gender and children in all occupations except the low-level, male-dominated one. This novel evidence in the British context highlights the relevance of examining the intersection of various dimensions of discrimination and the underlying mechanisms of social inequality.

Scientific knowledge dissemination, often reliant on journal articles, is the cornerstone of academia. The academic currency, publications and citations, play a pivotal role in evaluations, influencing tenure, hiring decisions, and funding allocations. Despite academic meritocracy, gender productivity gaps persist, hindering women's career progression. This study delves into the factors contributing to this gap, exploring the interplay between gender, and differences in work ethics and publication habits. Using data from the Zurich Survey of Academics and linking it to publication data (N≈4, 500), we employ five productivitymeasures. Preliminary results show gender differences in three measures: Men have more total and fractional peer-reviewed publications and a higher h-index than women.There is no evidence to support our first two hypotheses - writing down all studies, even null results, and allocating more time to research (as opposed to teaching) does not affect productivity directly. While preliminary findings on implicit attitudes toward questionable research practices (QRP) are inconclusive, explicit attitudes seem to matter. Scientists who are less uncomfortable with QRP, such as salami-slicing tactics and honorary authorship, show higher productivity. Additionally, our last hypothesis is supported, revealing a positive correlation between agreement with risky publication strategies and productivity measures.
Policy implications suggest the need to empower young women in science, encouraging risk-taking in publication strategies.  Our findings underscore the link between unethical conduct and productivity, and challenge assumptions about time investment and academic output. This study reframes the discourse on the gender productivity gap, providing insights that can inform interventions and reshape academicpractices.

Flexible and maternal employment, particularly in the form of part-time employment, have proven effective in alleviating unemployment and enhancing women's participation in the labor force – but does part-time work also have an impact on wages? This study investigates the causal relationship between part-time employment and wages. Three potential effects of part-time work are explored: firstly, a part-time penalty indicative of job-specific disparities; secondly, a diminished wage increase during part-time engagement; and thirdly, a "scar effect" upon returning to full-time employment, both reflective of worker-specific impacts. While job-specific effects merely "bruise" workers, worker-specific effects leave lasting "scars." Using 37 years of data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (1984-2020) in Germany, a good example of a coordinated labor market economy where part-time work by women in particular is widespread and dynamic, and employing asymmetric fixed-effects models to estimate switches in and out of part-time work, results show that part-time work in Germany has an important impact on wages, with gender differences playing a crucial role. Notably, women encounter no part-time penalty during switches into or out of part-time roles, and they even receive a wage bonus upon exiting such positions. In contrast, men experience substantial wage "bruising" and encounter no wage increase during periods of part-time employment.

Young people’s field of study choices are characterized by well-known patterns of gender segregation across the world, but some youth regularly defy gendered cultural expectations by graduating from fields of study that are not typical for their gender. However, less is known as to how persistent these youth are on their gender-atypical pathways post-graduation, and to what extent potential challenges in the school-to-work transition may lead to their self-selection out of gender-atypical pathways. Drawing on role congruity theory and the glass escalator thesis, this study investigates the duration of the school-to-work transition and the quality of first jobs within three years of graduating, comparing graduates with gender-atypical qualifications to the gender majority in their field. Particularly, I examine what role migration background plays in exacerbating or alleviating possible disadvantages of being in a (qualification-specific) gender minority. Focusing on Finland, I use full population register data of vocational and tertiary graduates born between 1979-1989 (n=544,339). Preliminary results based on piecewise-constant exponential survival and logit models suggest disadvantages for both male and female gender minorities during the school-to-work transition. Contrary to role-congruity expectations, within-field differences between specializations of gender majorities and minorities explain some of the gender penalty in job search duration for men in female-dominated fields. Migration-related penalties vary between male- and female-dominated fields and across educational levels, with disadvantages more likely to affect migrant women than men. Overall, graduates from gender-atypical fields are more likely to change their gender profile when entering a first job than their gender majority peers.

While common measures of occupational prestige target societal perceptions about occupations at the aggregate level, little is known whether these would apply equally to all occupational incumbents. Building on accounts that suggest separate prestige hierarchies for women and men, we study whether occupational prestige is differently attributed to female and male occupational incumbents. Using grammatically gender-specific occupational terms in the German language, we collect about 72,000 prestige ratings for 106 occupations that cover more than half of the employed workforce. Our preregistered research design allows us to test stereotyping theories, which suggest a general devaluation of women's work and especially negative or positive appraisal of workers in gender-atypical occupations. Additionally, we can assess potential biases in previous measures that only used generic masculine terms. Our study thus contributes valuable theoretical as well as methodological insights into the dynamics of gender and occupational prestige.

While women’s increasing entrances into male-dominated occupations led to some occupational desegregation, men’s presence in female-dominated occupations remains low. This has been linked to (1) female-dominated occupations being confined to few traditionally female-typed sectors, (2) female-dominated occupations offering fewer socio-economic benefits, and (3) men fearing stigmatization when working in gender-atypical roles. Yet, evidence is limited to few qualitative or single-country analyses, and we lack a comprehensive account for men’s lack in female-dominated occupations. In response, we analyze cross-national and temporal variations in men's engagement in female-dominated occupations based on European Labor-Force Survey data supplemented with country- and occupation-level information. By assessing how indicators related to the three proposed explanations apply across countries and time, our research contributes to understanding of factors that deter men from working in female-dominated occupations and perpetuate occupational sex segregation.

This research looks at gender differences in overeducation and work authority, two dimensions of gender labour market inequality that have rarely been explored together. Any possible association between gender and overeducation is expected to be lower among highly educated workers than among middle educated ones because the loss in human capital investment derived from overeducation is higher for highly educated women, and they may be subsequently more interested in delaying motherhood or an additional child after a job match is attained. This delay, though, may not be so feasible for securing work authority attainment because work authority usually happens later in labour market trajectory. Thus, an eventual lack of gender inequality in overeducation among highly educated workers may conceal a disadvantage in work authority attainment (women occupying positions of lower authority within well matched jobs). To test these hypotheses, random-effects logistic regression is applied to twelve waves of Understanding Society (2009-2011) for the study of overeducation, and random-effects multinomial logistic regression for the analysis of work authority attainment (three categories) Highly-educated female graduates are not found at a higher risk of overeducation than male graduates, and parenthood does not make any difference in this respect, but the initially expected positive association between gender and overeducation is indeed found among middle-educated workers, and such a disadvantage increases with motherhood and number of children. Conversely, a female disadvantage in work authority attainment is stronger among college graduates than among middle educated workers, and it increases with motherhood and number of children.

It is a consistent empirical finding in Western European immigrant youth populations that girls are markedly less likely to participate in leisure clubs than boys. We hypothesize that this sex disparity in leisure club participation is driven by gender traditionalism restricting girls' social involvement in associational life. Drawing on cultural legacy theory and in-depth ethnographic accounts, we specifically hypothesize that the dominant macro-level gender culture from parents' origin countries influences this sex gap via social learning and social control imposed by parents and peers at the micro-level in the destination country. To empirically test our hypotheses, we use unique panel data from four Western European countries and estimate multilevel linear probability models with random intercepts for the parents' country of origin. Our findings show that sex gaps in leisure club participation are strongly related to gender traditionalism in their parents' country of origin. Moreover, we find that parents' level of gender traditionalism and the level of gender traditionalism among children's school-peers are strongly predictive of sex gaps in leisure club participation, net of the level of gender traditionalism in their parents' country of origin. Overall, we find strong evidence that the wide sex gaps in leisure club participation among immigrant youth populations are driven by gender traditionalism.

This study examines how much immigrants from different groups assimilate to native-level volunteering in Denmark. We employ multilevel linear probability models, analyzing a dataset that combines repeated cross-sectional survey data with administrative register information. The dataset encompasses 15,771 respondents, of which 1,918 are immigrants from 127 different countries. Unlike recent European comparative research that has suggested that immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds ultimately reach parity with natives in their levels of civic participation in their destination countries, our findings reveal a different scenario in Denmark. Our results suggest that immigrants from Protestant and other Christian countries reach parity with natives in their level of volunteering, while immigrants from other countries do not. We show that socioeconomic disparities across immigrant groups partially account for these variations in volunteering assimilation, but even after accounting for socioeconomic factors and many other covariates, significant differences persist.

Increased rates of refugee immigration have led to rising concerns about integration in Europe. Public debates often focus on residential segregation, as there is a strong idea that economic disadvantages stem from concentrations of migrants in neighbourhoods. However, scholars show that living among co-ethnics can also generate certain advantages, such as employment opportunities or mutual support. Mixed findings have led to calls for research that compares and contrasts the role of residential and school segregation. Indeed, schools may play a more important role than neighbourhoods in facilitating the integration of refugees, as they imply more intense interaction across ethnic divides. Using Swedish register data, I take a life course approach to assess the first move away from the parental home, so called nest-leaving. I follow individuals born in 1987-1992 from age 16 to 28, distinguishing between refugees, migrants and Swedish-born individuals without immigrant ancestry. The underlying idea is to assess whether schools provide alternative socialising contexts to neighbourhoods. Results from logistic regression analyses indicate that individuals in neighbourhoods with high shares of immigrants are the least likely to move to higher SES neighbourhoods. Yet, refugees in schools with high shares of immigrants are more likely to move to higher SES neighbourhoods, but only if they live in neighbourhoods with low shares of immigrants. Findings also indicate that school and neighbourhood contexts play different roles for the nest-leaving of refugees, when compared to migrants and Swedish G3+. Overall, these results indicate that schools can provide alternative socialising contexts to neighbourhoods.

How do different cultural traits shape belonging among ethnoracial minorities in Western societies? Here, we adopt an experimental approach to investigate how ordinary individuals without migration background hypothetically react to situation in which individuals from linguistic, religious, racial, refugee and sexual minority backgrounds are openly disparaged. By doing so, we are able to uncover informal cultural hierarchies dictating the social acceptability of stigmatization of different groups, and vice versa, the strength of anti-intolerance norms protecting them. We use nationally representative data (n=2915) from a large-scale survey experiment in Germany consisting of vignettes in which minorities are stigmatized in public interactions. We report two major findings: first, there exist a clear hierarchy in minority traits whereby the stigmatization of Jewish, Black and gay people appears systematically more likely to trigger a willingness to intervene compare to the stigmatization of minority linguistic groups and Muslims. Second, we find that anti-intolerance norms are more easily activated in familiar contexts (e.g., interactions with family members) than unfamiliar ones (e.g. interactions with a cashier in a supermarket). We argue that these results have implications for multiple scholarships at the intersection of  assimilation, social norms and cultural sociology.

This study investigates whether individuals come to perceive their current tax burden as fair. I suggest that preferred tax rates and tax distributions depend on people’s perceptions about the status quo in taxation because individuals tend to use the status quo as an anchor for fairness judgments. To test this proposed mechanism, I adopt a two-step approach. First, I use cross-country data from the European Social Survey to show correlational evidence that (i) people consider higher tax burdens fair if they live in a country with high average tax rates and (ii) people accept larger tax progressivity if taxation in their country is already strongly stratified by income. Second, I use data from an Austrian survey experiment conducted in 2018 and show that informing individuals about the current tax system leads them to adapt their fair tax estimates towards the current tax rates. This holds also for the subgroup of high-income individuals who are informed that they are paying more than they initially expected. These results may help to understand why national tax systems (like welfare systems) remain relatively stable over time despite substantial differences in the size and evolution of inequality. Furthermore, the study provides evidence of the existence and substantial relevance of a strong relationship between institutional tax arrangements on the macro level and individuals' perceptions of what constitutes fair taxes for themselves at the micro level.

We investigate how people distribute resources (money) in a work context (hospital setting) using a distributional survey experiment (DSE) included in a representative survey in Switzerland. Using a DSE allows us to take the interdependence of earnings allocations among the people included in a choice set into account and to directly quantify respondents’ tastes for (in)equality in monetary terms.
We find that people consider both merit and need in their allocation decisions, as well as the occupational position of the vignette person. Moreover, women are paid about 230 Swiss Francs less than men, while people with an Arabic or a Slavic name receive about 280 Swiss Francs less. Finally, heterogeneous allocation decisions affect the amount of income inequality: People in higher self-reported class positions, with a higher personal income and those with a migration background from Western Europe tend to distribute more unequally. These results support the in-group favoritism hypothesis.

This study examines how workers in Germany evaluate their contributions to welfare—taxes and social security contributions (SSC)—based on self-interest and normative preferences. It explores the impact of these factors on workers' justice evaluations of their contributions and investigates whether these evaluations differ between taxes and SSC. Addressing gaps in previous research, which has focused either on self-interest or normative preferences regarding taxation and largely ignored SSC, this research assesses how the different reciprocity potentials of taxes and SSC influence perceptions of justice. Taxes are seen as offering lower reciprocity potential due to their broad application to welfare programs, while SSC, targeting specific areas, are expected to provide higher reciprocity and potentially mitigate the influence of self-interest through expected benefits. The study finds that higher income correlates with views of taxes as unjustly high, whereas this effect is not observed for SSC. A belief in meritocratic principles positively influences justice perceptions of taxes and SSC, suggesting that such principles affect evaluations of welfare contributions. Trust in political institutions also leads to more favorable justice evaluations of taxes and SSC. We use data from the Legitimation of Inequality Over the Lifespan (LINOS) panel study, which included responses from a representative sample of German employees in 2012 and 2017. The identification strategy relies on fixed-effects and between-within estimator panel models to estimate the effects of income and normative preferences on the justice evaluations of taxes and SSC.

Life satisfaction and subjective/objective socioeconomic status in European countries: Does affluence matter?
The correlation between life satisfaction and subjective/objective socioeconomic status (SES) has led to interest in their interplay. However, studies relying on single-country samples miss the broader social context's impact on individuals' identities. This limits their ability to explore how macro-level societal characteristics moderate the link between well-being and SES. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the links between life satisfaction, objective socioeconomic status (education, occupation, and income), and subjective status. In particular, it explores cross-national variation according to countries’ wealth. To test our theoretical framework, we use 2012 European Social Survey (ESS) data from 28 countries, employing multilevel regression analysis. The results reveal a stronger connection between socioeconomic status and well-being in poorer countries. In the most affluent countries, by contrast, the link between objective SES and life satisfaction is fully explained by subjective perceptions of one’s standing. Notably, individuals who locate themselves at the top of their society’s social hierarchy enjoy similar levels of life satisfaction irrespective of where they live. This finding has significant implications for cross-national research on the connection between status, income, and well-being. While research suggests people in wealthier countries tend to be happier, our analysis refines this, showing the link between well-being and status is mainly driven by subjective perceptions in more affluent countries. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the effect of the link between SES and well-being is moderated by subjective status. This moderating effect does not vary across societies.
Keywords: life satisfaction; socioeconomic status; subjective status; cross-national

Public perceptions of protest are one of the central drivers of social change. However, we know little about individual attitudes towards protest and social representations of their actors, demands or forms of action. Large-scale surveys focus on general attitudes towards protest, with a few exceptions that explore repertoires of action. Small-scale experiments provide rich evidence for particular dimensions of events and social responses, but they are limited to context-specific scenarios and non-representative surveys. This paper explores the use of large scale generative language models as surrogates for human respondents' sources of survey data on attitudes towards protest in the European, North and Latin-American context over different time periods. Biases of LLMs reflect complex patterns of association between ideas, attitudes, and contexts, which correlate with human response patterns along demographic axes, and reproduce negative perspectives towards protest to a different extent. An interpretation of the alignment between survey and synthetic evidence using context-specific attributes of protest cycles and trends in contentious action, provides insights on the potential and limitations of using LLMs for understanding public perceptions of protest.
Keywords: Protest, attitudes, public perceptions, large language models, synthetic survey data

Time use studies are usually based on survey-based time diaries. These studies consistently reveal significant differences between men and women in heterosexual relationships with children when it comes to household chores (Schulz, 2021). However, it is essential to acknowledge the inherent limitations of self-administered time diaries, which are susceptible to measurement errors. Technological advances such as wearables will allow researchers to gain more valid information of the division of tasks and daily routines between household members by using devices that automatically record (inter)action. The use of wearables has proven itself in various fields, including health sciences and organizational research. In contrast to these research fields, little is known to date about the acceptability of using such technology for research on behaviour in family life. When using wearables in family research, specific challenges arise that include measurement errors, data objectivity and willingness to participate. To address these research gaps, in our study, we explore the acceptance of wearables in households with young children. Our methodological approach comprises a) focus groups to delve into the fundamental aspects that parents find relevant in the context of using wearables, b) experimental surveys to investigate the prevalence of these identified aspects within the general population and c) a laboratory flat as a practical testing ground. Preliminary findings from focus groups suggest that parents of young children generally show interest to participate in scientific research, while parents’ primary concerns revolve around the constant portability of devices in younger children, rather than focusing on children's individual rights.
Schulz F (2021) Mothers’, Fathers’ and Siblings’ Housework Time Within Family Households. Journal of Marriage and Family 83(3): 803–819.

An often-heard assumption within public and scientific debates is that women receive less recognition than men for the same work or level of performance. We test this hypothesis via a survey experiment. Subjects evaluate a two-minute video in which either a female or a male character gives an oral presentation about a male-affine topic, a gender-neutral topic, or a female-affine topic. Hence, this variation allows also to investigate if the gender bias is topic specific or general. Furthermore, we vary the attractiveness of the presenting person. The literature to date suggests that attractiveness of male speakers increases performance evaluations while it decreases performance evaluation for women. Overall, the survey experiment has a 2 (sex) by 2 (attractiveness) by 3 (topic) design. The video presentations were created using an artificial intelligence video-maker that uses human-like avatars. Based on a sample of about 3000 students at the University of Bern in Switzerland, results show no influence of gender on how respondents evaluate presentations. However, we find that attractive male presenters receive more favourable evaluations than less attractive males. As these findings are based on a sample of students, the study will be replicated with a diverse sample of the Swiss population. In addition, we are extending the experiment by comparing the use of human-like avatars and real people (actors) to investigate the research question. This comparison will provide new methodological insights. This research is ongoing, but results will be available for the conference.

The estimation of the number migrants without a legal status (MWLS) poses a complex challenge for migration research. We investigate the untapped potential of passively collected digital trace data from social media platforms to shed light on this estimation problem, and, importantly, on the limits of innovative data and methodologies to attain such a goal. We benchmark our method using digital trace data from the Facebook Network (FN). The goal is to find irregularities in the data that can be interpreted or associated with the category of MWLS. Our empirical approach consists of three steps: the estimation of a predictive machine learning model for the number of migrants on the FN; a descriptive analysis of the errors of this model; and their statistical decomposition employing Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. We employ various gravity-model like data sources, UN DESA stocks, and FN data from Facebook’s advertisement API. The results of our three-step empirical approach suggest that the FN data does contain traces of what we could link back to irregular migration. The main advantage of using data from a digital platform such as the FN, in contrast to official statistics or other surveys, is that this hard-to-reach population of MWLS could be present in the FN's data, given that the platform itself does not disincentive participation in this social network (in contrast to traditional data). Estimating the size of the MWLS population on the basis of FN data is plausible but is riddled with various complications that we critically reflect on.

The paper addresses the less-researched topic of intrahousehold dynamics of female in-laws in developing countries by focusing on the bargaining between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and its influence on the latter's time allocation. Using the first nationally representative Time Use Survey of India, 2019, the paper answers two questions. First, how does the presence of the parents-in-law, particularly the mother-in-law, shape the daughter-in-law's distribution of time between paid and unpaid activities? Second, how does the relative bargaining power among the female in-laws affect the daughter-in-law's time allocation across different activities, where their education levels are used as indicators of bargaining power? The findings show that the daughter-in-law's participation in paid employment increases in the presence of her mother-in-law and she allocates more time to paid employment and less time to household production. The effect is evident for the daughters-in-law who co-reside with mothers-in-law who have completed at least secondary education. The mother-in-law's time allocated to household production and childcare increases when she co-resides with a daughter-in-law who has completed tertiary education. The father-in-law's presence consistently diminishes the daughter-in-law's engagement in paid employment and increases both women's time spent on household production. Heterogeneity in results is observed by socio-religious groups and by the extent of patriarchy in the state of residence. Overall, the results suggest that policies that aim to increase women's education and promote gender-equal attitudes among men can enhance the daughter-in-law's bargaining power and time allocation.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the division of childcare and housework tasks between parents and the degree of satisfaction they derived from such divisions. We also examine possible gender differences in these relationships and the moderating role of paid work engagement for gender-specific relationships. The study draws on the social exchange theory, equity theory, and relative empirical evidence to elucidate how couples assess the distribution of unpaid labour within their households. We hypothesize that mothers and fathers are most satisfied when perceiving unpaid labor division as relatively equal (H4.1). Additionally, any deviation from perceived equality is expected to be associated with a diminishing satisfaction rate (H4.2). Finally, we anticipate a stronger association between individuals' perceived ego inequality and satisfaction compared to perceived inequality for their partners (H4.3). To test these hypotheses, we use Familydemic Harmonised Dataset (CA, US, DE, SE, IT, PL). Details of the dataset are available in Data Descriptor (Scientific Data 2023, no 10, article 2). Our study provides empirical support for our theory-driven hypotheses.  Additionally, we show that perceived self-inequality in the divisions of unpaid labor is more strongly associated with satisfaction with such divisions for women than men. Moreover, women are least satisfied with the division of household work when they invest significant time in paid work while being solely responsible for unpaid work. On the other hand, women's peak satisfaction with the division of unpaid work is reached when they work and their partners take on all unpaid labour. 

In societies in which educational expansion is not followed by actual gender equity, assortative mating patterns can operate as an additional factor or reinforcement of gender differentials in society. Consistent with the resource’s theory our main hypothesis is that educational hypogamic couples will continue to exhibit an uneven distribution of tasks at home unless partners reach a more egalitarian occupational position. This is one of the reasons why the uneven division of housework and caregiving responsibilities between men and women remains far from being overcome. We take an innovative approach by adopting a longitudinal perspective to analyze the dynamic nature of couples’ arrangements in paid and unpaid work. Drawing on data from the British Understanding Societies panel data (UKHLS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we explore the relationship between partners’ educational and occupational characteristics and their division of housework and caregiving in these two countries in recent years. According to our expectations, we find that educational assortative mating patterns do not perfectly align with status assortative mating: a third of couples where the woman has a higher education level than the man still exhibit hypergamous status patterns. Furthermore, our analyses indicate that the distribution of housework tasks varies significantly depending on the homogamy profile of the couple.

This paper investigates the (mis)match between preferred working hours and actual working hours for men and women in same-sex versus different-sex couples, with a particular emphasis on parenthood status. The primary aim is to identify which groups successfully achieve their preferred working hours and to uncover potential differences between same-sex and different-sex couples in this context. Recent findings suggest that younger fathers increasingly desire reduced working hours to spend more time with their children, while mothers are often constrained to involuntary part-time employment. While previous research predominantly focused on work hour preferences of partners in different-sex unions, this paper takes on a new perspective by including the gender composition in couples as an explanatory factor. The study leverages data from ten waves of the German Microcensus (2010-2019), collected annually from 1% of households in Germany. Preliminary findings reveal that women in different-sex couples with children experience the largest mismatch between preferred and actual work hours, wishing to work an average of four hours more per week than they currently do. Their same-sex counterparts desire a one-hour increase, on average. In contrast, men in different-sex couples are the most successful in realizing their preferred work hours. However, men in same-sex couples experience more of a mismatch, aiming to reduce their working hours by approximately one hour per week. By using OLS regressions, I analyze how those differences are related to parenthood, gender composition in the couple, education, household income, and partner characteristics such as work hours and educational level.

Many scales exist to measure sexist attitudes, but they often fail to measure covert sexism. Existing measures fail to uncover hidden preferences, as social desirability bias pushes certain individuals to avoid expressing sexist attitudes. Moreover, most existing items employed in surveys exclusively refer to such attitudes in terms of a man-woman binary, leaving out more complex conceptualizations of gender and gender norms that escape this binarism.

To address these issues, we argue that it is important to measure respondents’ sexism by exploring the attitudes towards identities and family structures that challenge deeper and more entrenched patriarchal and heteronormated values, coming from an intersectional framework. We also contend that different methods need to be employed to gauge hidden preferences and minimize social desirability biases.

For this purpose, we implement a list experiment with three different treatments regarding sexist attitudes on issues that go beyond the gender binary and relate to non-traditional genders and family structures. We do this in Catalonia, aggregating the list experiments to the CEO Barometre with a sample size of 2000 individuals. Our main hypothesis is that using such a methodology, and deviating from the usual male/female binary in formulating questions to measure sexism, will show a higher prevalence of sexist attitudes in the population when compared to the other scales used for this purpose. The research plan has been pre-registered pending the access to the data, which will be available around March 2024.

Although the narrowing of gender inequalities in economic resources has stalled, women’s overall financial independence within Western societies has substantially increased in light of their rising educational attainment and labour market integration throughout the 20th century. Independent money management strategies, which establish money rather as an individual economic resource of both partners, have been shown to be more prominent in countries with policies supporting gender equality as they are closely linked to more equal resource levels within couples. In a comparative analysis, we investigate whether independent management is more prevalent among couples in Eastern Germany compared to Western Germany. We also explore whether different resource constellations within couple households are associated with a different likelihood of applying independent money management strategies across the two contexts. We apply logistic regression models to data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Contrary to expectations, our empirical findings reveal that independent money management is not substantially more common among Eastern German couples. The structural support for the dual-earner model in the East minimizes the impact of income constellations, while equal labor incomes positively influence such strategies in the West. In contrast to income, wealth inequalities are associated with independent money management, and we find fewer differences between Western and Eastern German couples. The results challenge assumptions about the direct impact of gender equality on individualizing economic resources within couples. They suggest that while income inequalities are associated with money management differently across regions, wealth inequalities consistently follow an individualized logic, irrespective of the context.

Prior literature suggests that there is an increase toward egalitarian values about gender roles but that this upward trend has stalled among recent generations. This claim is based on limited evidence from developed Western societies. It is questionable whether this claim can be upheld globally. The literature suggests that in particular in Islamic countries -- including the ones that are developed -- the trend towards egalitarian gender values is less steep. In this paper we examine whether the trend in gender role ideologies is a global phenomenon or to what extent there are variations across countries including non-Western and developing countries. In particular, this paper studies the over-time trends in gender role ideology by drawing a comparison between Islamic and Western countries. Our analysis is based on repeated cross-sectional data sets of WVS and EVS [IVS] over the period of past two decades (2005-2022). Following Gerling et al. (2019) the concept of ‘fractured modernization’ that due to religiosity support for egalitarian ideologies would be lower in countries with an Islamic civilization. This paper extends their study by following the stages of reconstruction, replication and generalization – stepwise extending the original research by adding more countries, waves and variables and new conceptualizations. We find number of variations across western and Islamic countries. On average an there is an upward linear trend over cohorts for western societies that starts leveling off in most recent cohorts. However, the developments in trends towards egalitarian gender ideology is leveling off much steeper in Islamic societies.

This study explores the influence of age differences in heterosexual couples on the likelihood of women experiencing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), utilizing comprehensive registry data from a 5-year cohort of offenders and victims in Catalonia, Spain. Event history analyses are employed, with the risk of revictimization as the dependent variable and age differences as the primary independent variable. The analyses incorporate various controls related to the backgrounds of both offenders and victims. The results suggest that the risk of re-victimization rises when the woman is older than the man, even after accounting for the absolute age of the partners. This affirms the credibility of status inconsistency theories, asserting that the likelihood of experiencing IPV increases when women surpass men in crucial resources and status.

International studies have shown that overqualification—possessing higher educational credentials than what one’s job or position requires—negatively affects health in the majority populations. In Sweden, it has been shown that overqualification increases the risk of hospitalization among immigrants. However, evidence is scarce regarding the negative mental health effects of overqualification among the second-generation—children of immigrants born in the host country—even though they face higher risks of overqualification and mental health issues compared to individuals with two native-born parents. Our study assesses the association between overqualification and the risk of common mental disorders among the second generation in Sweden. We investigate the following research questions: 1) How does overqualification affect mental health outcomes among the second-generation in Sweden? 2)  How do these relationships vary across gender and ancestral origin? We included individuals born in Sweden between 1981 and 1985. Overqualification is measured using the Realized Matches method. The outcome variable consists of dispensed antidepressant and anxiolytic psychotropic prescriptions, using the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register. Follow-up starts at age 25 and continues until death, emigration from Sweden, outcome, or Dec 31, 2019. We employed Cox proportional hazards regression to derive hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for prescriptions, with adjustments for demographic and socioeconomic factors. Our preliminary results show that overqualification is associated with higher risks of psychotropic prescription for the second-generation and the majority population. Also, our findings suggest that the adverse mental health effects of overqualification are similar between the second-generation and the majority population, and more pronounced among men.

Research suggests that adolescents’ psychosocial well-being was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains largely unclear whether these effects endured after the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions. This paper uses panel data from N = 7,756 11th and 12th graders in Germany to describe the development of well-being between fall 2019 and fall 2022 – that is, before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that well-being improved as the pandemic faded, but the recovery was only partial and did not return to pre-pandemic levels. For example, at the end of the pandemic in fall 2022, life satisfaction was still 0.21 SD lower than pre-pandemic levels in fall 2019, and self-rated health remained 0.41 SD lower. We also find heterogeneity in the development of well-being. Those with multiple infections fared worse and did not recover. In addition, we find that some people were particularly distressed by the restrictions, and these people showed lower levels of well-being during the pandemic. However, the differences disappeared once the restrictions were lifted. We discuss the implications of these findings for immediate interventions to improve young people's well-being and for future approaches to pandemics.

Previous research reported mental health changes surrounding family transitions, attributed to shifts in social, emotional, and financial resources. However, inconsistent findings suggest that specific subgroups drive these effects. Given the genetic component in mental health, we examine whether family transitions effects on mental health depend on individuals’ genetic susceptibility to depression.
Utilizing Finnish register data, we tracked 30,192 genotyped individuals over nine years, observing 7,116 individuals with transitions of union formation and 6,771 of union dissolution. Depression was measured through antidepressant prescription records, and genetic risk was assessed using a depression polygenic index (PGI), categorizing individuals into low-, medium-, and high-risk groups. Our analysis, incorporating fixed-effect models with PGI-group interaction terms, controlled for time-invariant characteristics, single-year age, and three-year calendar year dummies.
The results demonstrate consistent differences in antidepressant prescription rates among different genetic risk groups. Particularly, those with the highest genetic risk consistently showed the largest proportion of antidepressant prescriptions in both union formation and dissolution scenarios. Beyond these baseline differences, our findings suggest potential gene-environment interactions: Preliminary results indicate that the highest PGI group is most adversely affected in terms of depression risk during union dissolution, supporting our hypothesis. However, the variation in the impact of union formation on mental health was less clear. These findings underline the importance of considering genetic factors in understanding mental health trajectories during significant life transitions. Further subgroup analyses, considering gender and marital status, are planned to explore the nuances of these relationships.

This study bridges a critical gap in literature by exploring how night shift work affects sleep health among middle and older adults in the UK, emphasizing the moderating roles of social, biological, and environmental factors. Utilizing UK Biobank data and the stress process model for analysis, our research seeks to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between shift work and sleep health—an issue of increasing relevance in light of the global proliferation of shift work patterns. We use linear regression for sleep duration and ordered logit models for daytime sleepiness. The findings reveal significant disparities: night shift workers report markedly reduced sleep duration and heightened daytime sleepiness relative to non-nightshift workers. Notably, the study identifies key moderating factors—while marital status appears to mitigate some of the adverse effects of night work on sleep, the presence of children in the household, a predisposition towards morningness, and residing in lower latitude areas amplify these negative outcomes. The study further reveals gender-specific differences, with women's sleep more affected by family dynamics and men's by biology and environmental factors. For daytime sleepiness, additional variables—living with children, eveningness chronotype, and ethnic minority—intensify the challenges faced by night shift workers, particularly among ethnic minority women. Residing in higher latitudes offers some protection against daytime sleepiness, but only for those with higher education levels. This research significantly advances understanding by detailing the complex interplay between shift work and sleep health, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to mitigate these effects.

This study investigates the extent to which the sex ratio of refugee populations can shape attitudes toward these populations in Germany. Recent empirical work by Dancygier et al. (2022) links anti-immigrant hate crimes in Germany with mate competition in areas where refugee populations' sex ratios are skewed toward men. We build on this work by using a vignette survey experiment to explore the relationship between native attitudes and varying refugee sex ratios in Germany. We investigate whether the sex ratio of the refugee population contributed to the differences in people's non-acceptance toward the refugee influx and perceptions of different types of threats—threats to job competition, mate competition, German culture, and safety. We sample respondents through Facebook Advertising Manager in the German state Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania. Our result shows that non-acceptance toward a refugee group increases in line with the increase in the sex ratio of this group. Besides, perceived threats toward German culture and safety are especially marked by the extreme sex ratio of non-white male refugees. Female respondents tend to show more tolerant attitudes to groups of less male refugees than male respondents. However, female respondents also perceived higher threats in culture and mate competition from non-white male refugees. Male respondents perceived higher threats in job competition from non-white male refugees. Both female and male respondents perceived higher threats to safety from non-white male refugees. This study aims to clarify the mechanism of occurrence of the negative attitudes toward refugee influx in Germany.

Study presents findings from an empirical study on the Adapted Warner's Status Characteristics Index (AISC) and its application to mirror social stratification in Ukraine. The AISC encompasses six social status categories, including highest-high, lowest-high, highest-middle, lowest-middle, highest-low, and lowest-low. Before researchers, specializing in social stratification in Ukraine, adjusted the weights of the AISC's four dimensions—occupation, income, area of residence, and housing condition—based on their expertise.This study focuses on empirically check the application of the AISC in the context of Ukraine. To achieve this, the research employs the Factorial Design (FD) method to assess the relative importance of feature weights within the AISC. FD has been used in studies of social stratification and inequality before: early applications of FD aimed to measure individual and household status and prestige.The translation of the AISC's four dimensions into eight factors forms the basis for constructing a fractionalized sample of vignettes.Through the transformation of vignette characteristics back into the original four dimensions of the AISC, linear regression models are employed. The results indicate a significant disparity between theoretically derived weights and those established empirically.

Evidence suggests that social connectedness and living in more cohesive communities is associated with better mental health. However, little is known about the causal relationship between self-reported social cohesion and self-reported mental health. In this paper, we use UK Household Longitudinal Study data from three pre-pandemic waves and three waves collected during Covid-19 pandemic to assess whether the changes in perceived neighbourhood cohesion are associated with subsequent changes in mental distress and/or vice versa. To assess the direction of this relationship, we apply a number of statistical models, such as fixed-effects models, cross-lagged panel models, maximum-likelihood fixed effect dynamic panel models, and random intercept cross-lagged panel models. As expected, we find that perceived neighbourhood cohesion and mental distress are negatively correlated, and that this relationship is stronger during the Covid-19 period compared to the pre-pandemic periods. This is true even after controlling for a wide range of individual- and neighbourhood- level confounders.  We also find that the changes in perceived neighbourhood cohesion are associated with subsequent changes in mental distress. However, when we account for the path dependency (autocorrelation) and reciprocal relationship, we do not detect a direct effect of perceived neighbourhood cohesion on mental distress (or vice versa). This finding may suggest that the changes in both perceived cohesion and subjective well-being respond simultaneously to external shocks, and, to some extent, might be part of the same broader concept.

This study uses an experimental approach in examining attitudes toward gender roles with respect to paid work and familial responsibilities, i.e., gender ideologies. We present participants fictitious young adult couples, who vary randomly by six vignette dimensions: age of their child, employment status, actual or potential wage, housework, parental childcare and external childcare. Our preliminary findings reveal that men and women do not differ from each other in their evaluations of division of labor. We found differences in assessments by respondents’ educational attainment. Those with college education find single earner households less appropriate compared to ones with high school or less education. The strongest predictor of assessments is the gender ideology of the participant: essentialist, ambivalent and egalitarian. These groups are similar in their assessments of employment characteristics of vignette couples. Those with essentialist gender ideologies consider full-time employment of both partners to be inappropriate as opposed to others, as they refuse to support employment of women with small children. In addition, more liberally oriented individuals find equal division of childcare responsibilities more appropriate and the essentialists strongly oppose men’s responsibility for childcare. The variation among gender ideology profiles and educational status support the idea of multidimensionality. Respondents with different gender ideologies assess the employment combinations of women and men similarly, yet they starkly differ in their assessments of division of housework and childcare between women and men. This is an important experimental evidence to show that individual’s gender role attitudes vary toward women’s paid employment and unpaid work for housework and childcare.

Job loss has many detrimental and long-lasting effects on individuals, including a reduction of their post-unemployment wages. The size of the “wage scars” of job loss, however, depends on the extent to which individuals can rely on effective safety nets during unemployment. In particular, if the unemployed have access to financial resources during unemployment, they can prolong their job search until they find a suitable job. The prior literature has focused on the effectiveness of public safety nets, namely unemployment insurance, in reducing wage scarring. In this contribution, we additionally investigate the importance of private safety nets, namely those provided by wealth. Since access to this form of insurance is more unequally distributed, vast differences in family wealth may reinforce the stratifying effects of unemployment experiences on later wage inequalities. We also provide a comparative assessment of the United States and Germany to understand the extent to which private safety nets tied to wealth make up for and interact with public provisions of insurance against the effects of job loss. Our preliminary results reveal that wage scars are larger among US workers with little wealth compared to US workers with higher wealth, especially when they face longer unemployment durations. No such patterns can be observed in Germany, indicating that wealth becomes an important safety net when public insurance is weak, as in the United States. As a consequence, post-unemployment outcomes in the US are unequally distributed depending on wealth.

Young families in Europe are increasingly exposed to income instability with consequences for their risks of material deprivation. When one partner loses income, the employment of the other partner is assumed to be a critical coping resource to avoid material deprivation. However, whether and the extent to which such a coping resource is an effective buffer has not been addressed empirically. Focusing on a large number of European countries, this study uses EU-SILC longitudinal data to explore whether female employment cushions the negative consequences of the male partner’s earnings loss. We operationalize female employment in two ways: stable employment, she is steadily employed over the observational window; employment entry, she moves from non-employment to employment as a reaction to his earning loss. Our results show that the male partner’s earnings loss increases material deprivation. As expected, female employment reduces the effect of male earnings loss on material deprivation by about 30 percent. In addition, results show that the female partner’s stable employment and employment entry work to a similar extent in cushioning the negative consequences of the male partner’s earnings loss. Notwithstanding that, her employment is far from being enough to compensate for his income instability.

Poverty has spread in Europe over the last decade, becoming a central issue in the political debate. Besides objective measures of poverty, assessing the level of subjective poverty, especially among young adults, has become relevant for the consequences that feeling poor may have on household fertility decisions, consumption and investment in human capital. Objective and subjective poverty do not fully overlap, and the sense of insecurity can cause the feeling of not making ends meet. For renters and mortgaged owners, the cost of housing can be a significant burden, and the risk of not being able to pay the rent or mortgage payments can affect the well-being and feeling of poverty of young adults. Our research investigates the relationship between tenure status and subjective poverty for households of young independent adults aged 18-34 living in 24 European countries, assessing whether rent regulation plays a role in influencing this association.
Using micro-level data from EU-SILC and macro-level data on rent regulation, we estimate multilevel linear regression models with a three-level random effects specification: young household respondents (Level 1) are nested in country waves (Level 2), which in turn are nested within countries (Level 3).
Our results show that, controlling for income level and housing costs, being a tenant or a mortgaged homeowner increases the probability of suffering economic hardship compared to being an outright homeowner. By offering affordable options, rental housing policies can also reduce subjective poverty among youth who are not direct beneficiaries of these policies.

Typically, poverty risk is assessed at the household level, neglecting within-couple income inequality and the role of individual characteristics in vulnerability to income poverty. This paper uses German SOEP data and Kleven’s event study design for child penalties to investigate poverty dynamics within couples over an 8-year period around first birth. During this phase, when income disparities between partners are prominent, couples may pool resources, reducing the immediate poverty risk for the lower-earning partner. However, low personal income can still leave individuals vulnerable and exposed to social risks, particularly women. By simultaneously evaluating household and individual poverty risks, i.e. with/out access to partner income, the paper enhances our understanding of economic inequality within couples and the link between parenthood and poverty risk.
Women with low and high levels of education diverge in their fertility behaviour and encounter distinct motherhood penalties on income, suggesting education-specific effects of first birth on poverty risk at household and individual levels. Focusing on partnered women aged 16–49 who had their first child between 1992 and 2013 (N=1,176), the causal analysis examines motherhood penalties on poverty risk by the unit of analysis and education background, from two years before the transition to parenthood until the first child turns six, controlling for period and age trends. Preliminary results indicate a consistently low household poverty risk for couples during the time window, with men showing similar individual poverty trajectories. By contrast, women exhibit distinct trajectories between household and individual levels, marked by educational disparities and temporal changes.

In light of growing debates on the idea of universal basic income (UBI), research on its popular support has burgeoned in recent years. Although this emerging literature has delivered many valuable insights into the individual and contextual determinants of such support, it is often criticized for capturing ‘uninformed’ or even ‘cheap’ opinions because most people supposedly lack the necessary knowledge to assess the effects a welfare reform as complex as UBI would have for them personally and for society as a whole. This article addresses that research gap by investigating if and how citizens change their opinion about UBI in response to evidence-based information regarding its predicted outcomes. More specifically, we make use of a novel experiment embedded in the second wave of the Basic Income Belgium survey that explores how citizens react to micro-simulated information about the effects of UBI on both their household income and the national poverty rate. Building on a combination of framing, voting and welfare state theories, we hypothesize that support for UBI will increase when its effects are framed positively and decrease when framed negatively, but that the decrease in case of negative information will be stronger than the increase in case of positive information (“negativity bias”). Whether people react more strongly to information about UBI’s effects on their pocketbook or on poverty and how they make trade-offs when these outcomes collide is an open question but is expected to be moderated by individual characteristics such as age, income, and political ideology.

Public opinion research shows that individuals generally support the welfare state and its functions, but not necessarily all beneficiaries of social spending. The question of 'who should get what and why' is addressed in the context of research on deservingness opinion, an approach to understanding redistributive preferences and public support for social policy with regard to different target groups. The paper examines families as a specific target group of social spending, as they are rarely explicitly considered in the literature on deservingness opinion. More precisely, the focus is on the perceived deservingness of different family models or constellations, as well as the effect of deservingness opinions on redistributive preferences with regard to families. To address this objective, the results of a systematic literature review as well as the design of a factorial survey experiment will be presented. The systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of previous research on family deservingness and informs the experiment. The experiment includes vignettes of different family models and constellations. It aims to investigate the effect of different family attributes on perceptions of deservingness and public support for families as a target group of social policy and spending.

The research on the effects of political TV debates among party leaders and main candidates organized shortly before election produced important insights into whether and how media can affect the vote choice and preferences (Maier et al., 2022; Lloyd et al., 2020; Goldberg, 2020). Panel surveys are commonly used to answer these questions. Nevertheless, this design often relies only on a self-reported question as an indicator of exposure to the pre-election debate. This indicator is problematic, as it leads to overestimation and can thus distort the observed effect on voter preferences (Prior, 2012). In this context, some authors have suggested using alternative tools like passive measurement of media consumption with potential to increase the validity of research on media effects. In our paper, we fill this void.
We analyse whether TV debates have an effect on vote choice and preferences using both subjective (survey-based) and objective (passive measurement of the media consumption) measures of TV debate exposure. More specifically, we use a unique Czech Presidential Election Panel Survey 2023 (CPEPS 2023), which combines data from a representative questionnaire panel survey with passive measurement of media consumption of the survey respondents. This design allows us to compare and discuss the impact of these two different measurements. To minimize the problem of a selection bias in the context of watching TV debates, propensity score methods will be used to estimate the causal effects of individual indicators. The central findings of this article should have important implications for future research.

This study explores the dynamics of political discussion networks across the political spectrum, studying the variation in network composition and structure based on political orientation. We depart from the regularity that humans are inclined to engage with similar others, but those with extreme political views may face challenges in finding likeminded individuals even when possessing a heightened preference for such homophily.
We posit that extremists are more likely isolated, and maintain smaller, more homogenous networks with pronounced divisions between differently minded individuals. We use the 2013 Spanish General Social Survey (N=8403) that includes many personal network questions and political orientation for both respondents and their networks.
The preliminary results show that, contrary to expectations, extremists were found to have on average, larger networks than moderates. Both fewer opportunities to meet like-minded others and a preference for homophily seem to shape extremists’ networks: they were more heterogeneous than that of moderates, even if their deviation from expected heterogeneity based on random mixing was also larger (particularly for the extreme right). Consequently, extremists were significantly more exposed to opposing views in their core networks than moderate individuals. Tie activation followed similar patterns: Despite tendencies of homophily in their tie activation (which moderate individuals lacked), extremists were significantly more likely to talk about politics with family and friends with opposing views than moderate individuals.
In summary, the research suggests that personal networks, despite individuals' political extremeness, act as a buffer against online filter bubbles, fostering exposure to diverse perspectives within core discussion networks.

Transnational fathers have been largely neglected in the study of transnational families. However, recent research is reconsidering the complexity of the phenomenon, highlighting the attempts of migrant fathers to be present parents and care for their children in their country of origin. Empirical evidence on distant fathering is scarce. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project (1982-2019) and a sample of 951 Mexican transnational fathers living in the United States, this article addresses two research questions. First, it seeks to explore the family configuration on both sides of the border when the father is absent due to international migration, an issue that has not yet been documented. Second, our study examines the behaviour of fathers' remittances according to the transnational family structure. While remittances have been addressed in previous research, transnational fathers have not been the focus of these studies and it is unclear what conditions enable transnational fathers to better support their children economically in their home country. Preliminary findings suggest that the location of the migrant's spouse plays an important role in determining the amount of remittances. If the wife lives with the children in Mexico, they are more likely to receive money from their fathers. In addition, migrants send less to their families back home as they become more integrated in the US.

Geographical mobility is a topic highly studied in social sciences. Concerning the European context, the gradual dismantling of internal borders challenges the traditional dichotomies that framed our way of studying this social phenomenon, and the new “frontier-free Schengenland” that has originated made migrant workers become EU movers. In this new framework, Italian migrants went from being (mainly illiterate and unskilled) labour force for other European countries to becoming more educated and skilled persons looking for better opportunities abroad. The literature suggests that migrants are positively self-selected into migration based on their education and social background. According to the Human Capital Theory, some persons have specific features, in terms of financial and human capital, that make them able to afford the financial and psychological costs of the movement and to get higher returns from it, and hence more migration-prone. This article examines the role of social origins and education in the process of selection into migration of Italian migrants in Europe by means of linear regression models. The analysis investigates gender differences in the probability of emigrating as well, considering the interaction with education, social origin, birth cohort and marital status.

Inequalities in health care access are a potentially important driver of social and ethnic inequalities in health. We conducted a large nation-wide field experiment to assess discrimination in accessing German private practices in five medical specialties (general practitioners, pediatricians, radiologists, dermatologists, and psychotherapists). Fictitious patients contacted approximately 7,000 practices by email, describing their condition and requesting an appointment as soon as possible. Patients with German-sounding names received a positive response in 50.5% and were offered a concrete appointment in 19.7% of cases. These numbers are substantially lower for patients with Turkish-sounding (44.4/15.4%) and Nigerian-sounding names (43.3%/16.1%). Positive response and appointment offer rates were also substantially higher for patients with a doctoral title (as opposed to no title) and for those with private (as opposed to statutory) insurance, with higher doctor remuneration for treating privately insured patients likely being a primary driver of the latter effect. Interactive specifications indicate that minority-ethnicity patients benefit less from having private insurance or a doctoral title than patients with German-sounding names, a result that is at odds with a simple statistical discrimination interpretation of ethnicity effects. Further analyses will explore effect heterogeneity in terms of physician/patient interactions (e.g., according to name-proxied physician gender and migration background) and contextual variation (e.g., according to physician density as a measure of competition and right-wing vote shares as indicators of local anti-immigrant sentiment).

Levels of exclusion of ethno-religious immigrants among the majority population vary strongly across European countries. This study addresses the question whether these variations are related to differences in immigrant integration policies and welfare policies across Europe. We argue that both policies need to be considered simultaneously, given the development of integration policies within historical frameworks of pre-existing welfare regimes, and expect that policies may set intergroup norms discouraging exclusion of ethno-religious immigrants. Using data from the European Social Survey, enriched with information on immigrant integration policies and welfare policies related to the labour market, we only find a negative association between welcoming integration policies and ethno-religious exclusionism, yet not for more generous welfare policies. Additionally, we hypothesize that the relationship between governmental policies and exclusionism might be weaker for people in economic precarious positions as compared to their more privileged counterparts, because people in such precarious positions face more intergroup competition and perceive more intergroup threat. Our findings show that exposure to more welcoming integration policies is less strongly negatively associated with exclusion of ethno-religious immigrants for some economic precarious groups (i.e., for lowly educated and low income groups) but not for others (i.e., for unemployed people and those living under economic strain). Exposure to more generous welfare policies is unrelated with exclusion of ethno-religious immigrants for both people in precarious and non-precarious positions.

Education serves as both an enhancer of opportunities and a mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of advantage. To understand which of these two faces of education takes the lead, sociologists studied skill acquisition during periods when children attend school, compared to periods when they do not, such as during the summer break. Such a seasonal comparison approach allows for examining exposure to schooling as a channel to raise academic achievement and potentially reduce inequalities by socioeconomic background. Recent doubts about the replicability of seasonal learning gap findings prompt a reevaluation of exposure effects. Therefore, we employ an elaborate differential exposure model to provide more precise and nuanced insights into the efficacy of education in advancing academic achievement and reducing socioeconomic inequalities. Leveraging data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education, including national achievement tests in reading and mathematics from Grades 1-5, our study investigates exposure effects by examining the length of intervals between midterm and end-of-term tests. Given that two test scores are available for multiple grades and school years, we exploit (A) variation between grades within schools at a given school year, and (B) variation between grades within individuals across different school years.

The role of schools in equalizing educational disparities has been a subject of debate in educational sociology. This study revisits the 'school as equalizer' hypothesis, empirically examining it in the societal and educational context of Italy. Our research utilizes large-scale data from the INVALSI study, encompassing mathematics and reading competencies of the Italian population of primary and secondary school students. Using data from 5th and 6th graders tested in 2013 in Northern Italy (n=373,831 students), we apply an adjacent-grade design that distinguishes the effects of schooling from age-related influences on learning inequalities as related to socioeconomic status, migration background, and gender. Findings indicate that schooling indeed contributed to narrowing disparities by social and migration background, yet the cognitive domain matters. Moreover, our findings show that schooling increased gender gaps in math and decreased gender gaps in reading. Our study’s methodological and substantive insights challenge and refine the debate on the ambivalent role of schooling in educational inequalities by providing empirical evidence from a Southern European perspective. 

This study provides the first ever longitudinal, globally comparative analysis of the levels, trends, and drivers of socioeconomic segregation between schools. Our theoretical framework suggests that the degree of school segregation is primarily determined by four factors: (1) the relative differences in power and resources between groups, (2) the extent to which groups are spatially separated from one another, (3) the extent to which schools vary in cost, resources, and prestige; and (4) the degree to which the institutional environment facilitates opportunity hoarding. To test this framework, we created a unique pooled dataset containing harmonized indicators for student socioeconomic status (SES) derived from seven international large-scale assessments in education, covering 8 million students in 250,000 schools in 134 countries. We use this harmonized dataset to calculate indicators for school segregation (exposure and unevenness) for each country, year, and grade combination. We find that levels of socioeconomic school segregation vary greatly across countries and regions and are particularly high in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Latin America. School segregation is negatively associated with economic development, and positively associated with economic inequality and the share of private school enrolment. Based on these findings, we argue that many countries in the global South are stuck in a negative equilibrium of highly segregated education systems and high levels of educational and social inequality.

In this paper, using an IV estimation strategy I show that the average student participating in high-stakes testing in 6th grade in January, four months before the national standardized low-stakes testing in May, score significantly higher on these low-stakes tests. The difference between those taking the high-stakes tests and those, who do not are around 12-20\%. This effect is larger for high-SES students and (marginally) for boys. These results underline the importance of learning to the test (increased student effort), and also suggest that the increased competition/pressure benefits boys more than girls, and is more beneficial for high-SES students, probably due to better access to resources.

This study investigates the effects of socioeconomic statuses on having a romantic partner among childless individuals. We use six panel data from six countries in Europe, East Asia, and Australia to compare different social contexts. Previous studies have analysed the relationship between socioeconomic status and union formation as well as fertility behaviours. However, there is a significant research gap of analysing between socioeconomic inequalities and having a partner. Remaining unpartnered childless perhaps is the result of facing double barriers to (1) finding a stable partner and (2) having a child. These barriers may be related to regional and/or socioeconomic inequalities, and men and women may face these inequalities differently. Utilizing panel data from six diverse countries, this research employs event history models to predict how age and socioeconomic statuses influence the transition from being unpartnered and to having a partner as well as from having a partner to being unpartnered. Key questions focus on socioeconomic inequalities in finding a partner, with attention to country and gender disparities. This study addresses a significant research gap in understanding the intricate relationships between socioeconomic inequalities and partnership choices affecting childlessness. Results will be ready by the conference.

To date, the macro-structure of occupational intermarriages remains largely unclear. Previous research pays much attention to individual mating preferences and intra-household inequalities, and couples are consequently extracted from the social context in which they are embedded. This study adopts a different network approach and offers structural insights: what occupation married what occupation? We apply a novel mobility network method to investigate the network of occupational intermarriages, viewing occupations as nodes and marriages as ties. To our knowledge, this is the first research to attend to marriage patterns from a network perspective. We use random samples of longitudinal data from the 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 US decennial censuses and the 2010 and 2021 American Community Survey (25,000 marriages, 126 occupations, 6 waves). Preliminary analyses have identified endogenous patterns in occupational marriage networks – loops (same-occupation marriages), concentration (specific preferences for occupations during marriage) and lack of reciprocity (mutual marriages between occupation pairs), and the trends across the past 50 years – positive loops and negative reciprocity staying stable, concentration and educational similarity decreasing, and sex-segregation and income similarity increasing. Results also show that women and men adopt significantly different marriage patterns when controlling for the distribution of individuals in each occupation. 
Keywords: occupation, marriage, social network, gender

In the European marriage market context, where urban trends and educational trajectories play pivotal roles, our study investigates the interplay between a woman’s geographical origins and her educational attainment in determining marital preferences. Using the SHARELIFE retrospective dataset, specifically waves 3 and 7, we explore the marriage choices of women across seven European countries, contrasting urban and rural settings. Our analysis is grounded in two primary theoretical frameworks: Cultural Matching and Status Achievement. Cultural Matching suggests that individuals often form unions with those from a similar background. Meanwhile, Status Achievement emphasizes the economic factors of marital decisions, highlighting the advantages inherent to urban environments. Our hypotheses propose that urban areas, enriched with opportunities, inherently provide urban women—especially the more educated ones—a distinct advantage in the marriage market. These women directly benefit from the opportunities their urban environment offers. Conversely, rural women often encounter challenges when seeking these urban benefits, largely due to the distinct cultural and educational norms of their upbringing. Our findings underscore the pivotal role of a woman's geographical origin and educational level in accessing the urban marriage market. Rural women, especially those with lower educational backgrounds, frequently face barriers in the urban marriage market, experiencing a combined disadvantage linked to both their geographical roots and educational background. Higher education can assist rural women in narrowing the gap relative to urban women; however, it does not fully equalize the disparities in accessing the urban marriage market.

Utilizing the DADS-Postes administrative dataset complemented by census, this study aggregates work and family information at the commuting zone level to assess the impact of male manufacturing job losses on single motherhood and explore the moderating role of family norms in France between 1990 and 2018. Results suggest that the impact of male job losses on single motherhood is larger in regions with a more individualised family culture, characterised by higher rates of cohabitation, births outside marriage, divorce, maternal employment, and female education. Working-class family structures appear insensitive to male job losses when based on traditional solidarity in which spouses conform to a constraining marriage model and have limited autonomy. However, they become more dependent on men’s financial support for family consumption and status when these traditional norms are relaxed.
While few previous studies have explored the interplay between structural and cultural factors in marital instability, this study is the first to directly measure labour market upheavals and provide causal evidence of their interaction with working-class family culture.

This article examines the distribution of wealth across age groups in six countries, focusing on non-housing assets, financial assets, liabilities, and housing equity. It explores how wealth and inequality are structured across the life course and the implications for policy in areas like pensions, taxation, and social security. The study uses the Luxembourg Wealth Study for data and applies the Gini decomposition method to analyze wealth distribution. Key findings include significant disparities in housing equity among young adults in the U.S. compared to other countries, and varying trends in age-related wealth inequalities across countries. The research offers insights into wealth composition and distribution, aiding in the development of strategies to address wealth inequality.

Wealth, a pivotal facet of social stratification, has recently received increased attention. Even seemingly rudimentary aspects, such as home ownership, unveil substantial shifts within the social stratification system. This topic exemplifies complex trends affecting inequality, demography and welfare regimes. This study identifies a profound cohort discontinuity across birth cohorts in several countries, marked by a significant decline in home ownership rates for generations born post-1960. Furthermore, the dichotomy between owners and non-owners is becoming increasingly hierarchical, spanning income and education lines, signaling profound transformations over recent decades.
Utilizing the LIS database (https://www.lisdatacenter.org/) and encompassing diverse countries with distinct welfare and housing systems, we employ a novel series of Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models. These models, notably the APC-disco (discontinuity), employ bootstrap techniques to delineate linear trends by cohort segments, identify cohort disruptions, and establish confidence intervals. Our findings corroborate a general downturn in home ownership among recent birth cohorts, disproportionately affecting the less educated, lower-income individuals, and, in a subset of countries with detailed intergenerational data, children with less educated fathers.
Spain in particular, and countries typical of the liberal (English-speaking) welfare regime, emerge as particularly illustrative of generational discontinuity, although its impact extends to other nations. When controlled for educational levels, housing ownership dynamics complement other challenges faced by younger generations (such as overeducation), wherein better-educated cohorts contend with diminished prospects in the housing market. Our future research endeavors aim to systematically compare international trends in this evolving landscape of wealth accumulation and social stratification.

The family is an important safety and support network for many. This often includes not only emotional and practical support but also financial assistance for example in times of crises or hardship. While previous research narrowly focused on parents as the providers of financial assistance we broaden the scope of understanding family dynamics and support structures by exploring financial support between siblings and the factors linked to it. The potential determinants we consider include the gender, socio-economic status, and age as well as health of the individual and their siblings. Further, we argue that relationship and family characteristics like emotional closeness, geographical proximity, existing own children or the provision of financial support from parents could be relevant as well. For the analyses, we use data from the KINMATRIX project, collected in nine European countries and the US between December 2023 and January 2024. The data set offers a sample of 12,438 respondents aged 25-35 who provided detailed information on their family composition and relationships. In the US subsample used for the preliminary analyses 16% of the 3,189 individuals with at least one sibling indicated having received sibling financial support. Logistic regressions revealed that, while gender appeared to be irrelevant, the social status of the potentially providing sibling and their age were positively linked to financial support. Further, being emotionally close and having regular contact as well as additionally receiving parental support and having a migration background, were positively and, overall, most strongly associated with financial support.

The time devoted to unpaid work in the domestic sphere reduces time devoted to paid work and this time loss is higher for women than for men. The consumption of domestic services may serve as a mechanism to reduce the burden of unpaid work and to increase the labor force participation rates of men and women.
This study takes a longitudinal couple-level approach and analyzes whether the likelihood of working and the number of work hours of male and female partners in households that employed a domestic worker increased after employing the domestic worker, and whether these changes translate into reduced gender inequality in labor force participation within households.
Using an analytic sample of 85,282 married heterosexual non-Haredi Jewish couples aged 25-64 from the harmonized panel database of the Israeli Labor Force Survey for the years 2000-2017, and by employing an instrumental variable approach with Fixed-Effects Two-Stage Least Squares models, we find that outsourcing affects employment both at the extensive and at the intensive margins, but only among highly-educated women. The increase in highly-educated women’s likelihood of working and the increase in their weekly work hours are translated into a reduced gender gap in employment and in work hours, no matter their partner’s level of education.

This paper investigates how the disability of a child affects employment trajectories and the labour market performance of mothers and fathers. Leveraging comprehensive Italian administrative data, we first match parents having a child with or without a disability employing propensity score matching techniques and then compare their labour market outcomes using an event study design. Our preliminary results underscore a pronounced and statistically significant downturn in income levels and active participation in the labour market for parents with a child with a disability. Remarkably, this adverse impact lingers over time and manifests as markedly more severe for mothers than fathers.

In the past 12 months 3.4% of adults experienced intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA). While the wellbeing/health consequences of IPVA have been well documented, research on the impact of IPVA on labour market behaviour is scarce. We investigate how different forms of IPVA are related to job loss and time off work, as well as the gender and socioeconomic inequalities therein.
Using four waves of data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (2008, 2010, 2012 and 2017), we examine whether respondents reported socio-economic effects of their reported abuse, including job loss, obtaining a not job after IPVA related job loss, compassionate/medical leave and the amount of leave taken.
Our analyses show that being a victim of stalking, controlling and coercive behaviour, and threats by a (former) intimate partner in the past 12 months, but not physical violence, is associated with increased risk of job loss. Men and those with a middle and lower socioeconomic class have higher risk of job loss following IPVA. Regarding time off work, all forms of IPVA are related to taking time off from work. Cumulative exposure to different forms of IPVA increased the risks of job loss and of taking time off work. IPVA type was not associated with obtain a new job nor the amount of time taken off work. We conclude that IPVA has a significant and detrimental impact on victims’ labour market outcomes, indicating a spiral of economic precarity and IPVA.

There is ample empirical evidence for the family labour supply model whereby unemployment of one partner increases the labour supply of the other, the so-called added worker effect. Less is known, however, whether the increased labour supply of the reacting female partner happens only during the male’s partner unemployment spell or if it lasts beyond it. This paper investigates change in couples’ division of paid work during and after an unemployment spell of the male partner and the role of countries’ economic, policy, and gendered labour market contexts in moderating it. Using the longitudinal EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions covering 31 European countries from 2003 to 2019, we employ a difference-in-differences design with propensity score matching to examine whether women’s share of couple’s total paid working hours change during and after an unemployment spell of the male partner, compared to a control group of observably similar couples who does not experience male unemployment. We subsequently run a multilevel analysis with random slopes and cross-level interactions in the matched sample to measure the moderating effect of different countries’ contexts on women’s share of couple’s total paid working hours after their male partner regained employment. We find evidence of a statistically significant increase in women’s share of couples paid working hours after their male  partner regained employment, but particularly among those women who work part-time. This partner’s effect significantly varies between different countries’ different contexts.

This paper examines the influence of fatherhood on earnings in Spain, using panel data spanning from 2005 to 2022. While there exists substantial research regarding the adverse effects of motherhood on income, our understanding of its impact on fathers, particularly in the Spanish context, remains limited. In certain countries with available data, fathers tend to experience a financial advantage, commonly referred to as the ""fatherhood bonus"" or “fatherhood premium”. This phenomenon is primarily attributed to gender role specialization, where women assume caregiving responsibilities while men engage in paid employment, employers' preferences for male employees, and the self-selection of individuals into parenthood, as those more established in the labour market may also be more likely to become fathers.
This paper seeks to assess the impact of fatherhood on men's earnings and explore its underlying factors by focusing on three understudied dimensions: the wage advantage or disadvantage concerning fathers' occupational categories, family structures (men residing in heterosexual partnerships, same-sex partnerships, or single-parent households), and the use of longer-term parental leave to take care of young children after an initial spell of maternity and paternity leave. The study is grounded in three primary hypotheses. Firstly, we anticipate that the fatherhood bonus will be notably pronounced among men in higher occupational strata, as they confront greater opportunity costs when adjusting their working hours. Secondly, we expect the fatherhood bonus to be more substantial among men in heterosexual partnerships, owing to the heightened likelihood of gender specialization in such arrangements. Thirdly, regardless of their occupational characteristics and family structure, we expect the use of parental leave will penalize men’s wages due to the low commitment stigma. 
The study relies on data obtained from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives, a survey encompassing individuals who have made contributions to or received benefits from the Spanish social security system during the reference years. To estimate the anticipated earnings of men with and without children, we employ unconditional quantile regression on longitudinal data. Additionally, we integrate quantile regression with fixed effects techniques to account for self-selection into fatherhood.

Transmitting the paternal surname to children is a deep-rooted custom that has been in force in most patrilineal societies for centuries and that, on a symbolic level, speaks very eloquently of the gender inequality that persists in society. However, despite its obvious relevance for gender equality, sociological literature has devoted very little attention to the issue of children’s surnames. To address this research gap, in this article we investigated the propensity to give children both parents surnames (i.e., a double surname) in the Italian context. Italy is an extremely interesting case as the article of the civil code that assigned the paternal surname to newborns by default was declared unconstitutional in 2022 by the Constitutional Court and now children are allowed to take a double surname as a rule, unless the parents agree otherwise. However, it is an open question whether and to what extent this new practice will diffuse in Italian society. To address this question we drew on the theory of the diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1962) as well as social norms theory (Bicchieri, 2016) and we developed an online survey experiment to test the role of social norms, understood as empirical and normative expectations, in promoting or hindering the diffusion of the double surname. Our results suggest a stronger influence of empirical expectations when compared to normative ones and that gender, as well as certain personal normative beliefs, such as religiosity and political ideology, are the most significant factors in explaining preferences for the double surname.

Recent research suggests that paternal involvement is associated with more gender egalitarian attitudes in children and a more egalitarian distribution of domestic chores between sons and daughters. Although previous studies have tested the effects of paternal involvement on teenage children, the process of internalization of gender norms and roles in early childhood has not yet been investigated. This study investigates the effects of paternal involvement on the frequency of gender-incongruent activities in children’s play at age 2. Analyses are based on the French Elfe cohort with information at age 2 for 11564 children born in 2011. Multivariate linear models were run separately for sons and daughters. Paternal involvement in early childhood was associated with more frequent gender-incongruent activities in boys’ play at age 2 but not in girls’ play. The effect of paternal involvement further varied depending on the type of involvement: involvement in domestic chores and childcare were associated with more gender-incongruent activities for sons but paternal participation in children’s play increased the frequency of activities gender-typed as masculine, independently of the child’s sex. Paternal involvement in housework and childcare in early childhood shapes gender-typed activities in toddlers’ play for sons but not for daughters. It contributes to “undoing gender” of play activities for boys and, in doing so, narrows the gender gap in children’s play.

This analysis uses a sample of women from the Spanish Continuous Sample of Working Lives (MCVL), administrative records from the social security that can be analyzed longitudinally. The aim of this study is not only to show through a multichannel sequence analysis the patterns between pre-maternity and post-maternity work trajectories, but also to perform a multivariate analysis to verify to what extent the pre-maternity work trajectory influences the post-maternity work penalty and the use of conciliation measures.
The MCVL allows us to verify how mothers´ labor market insertion trajectories, some work-life balance policies (leave of absence and reduced working hours for childcare) and certain family events are articulated in the labor market evolution of mothers who had their transition to adulthood during the end of the economic and financial crisis. For this purpose, we chose a sample of 6,978 women who had their first child in 2013. Since these are longitudinal data, we can observe month by month the entries and exits from formal employment approximate individual social class through the contribution category and amount.
The logic of the comparison is twofold because we divide the life stage into two. On the one hand, a) we analyze the work itineraries from 8 years before having a first child, from 2005 to 2013, and, on the other hand, we analyze the employment path after first parenthood when the first child has reached 9 years of age, from 2013 to 2022. This combination of sequence and regression analysis allows us to discover inductively the types of work trajectories over 17 years of life of a cohort of women who have been mothers and to see how these influence two crucial moments in the family cycle.

Immigration is a global phenomenon that has significant economic, social, and political consequences. However, the systematic study of the impact of immigration on redistribution preferences in South-South contexts has been largely neglected and has been assumed to be similar in South-North contexts. This article argues that immigration shocks have a differential effect in South-South, as cultural differences between natives and immigrants tend to be small and the welfare state is truncated. Understanding the impact of immigration on redistribution preferences is crucial as the welfare state in Global South countries is embryonic and broad coalitions are required to implement redistributive policies that require improvements in state capacity (Holland and Schneider, 2017). Moreover, when the welfare state is being created, it is easier to exclude the outgroups from the benefits of social policies, which has long-term effects on the characteristics of the welfare state (Cavaillé and Straeten, 2023). We use observational data from the LAPOP exploiting the ``Venezuelan shock” between 2015 and 2018. We exploit within regional differences in Venezuelan rates, a shift-share instrument, and an event study. We document a precisely null effect. We complement this evidence with an experiment with two treatment arms. First, some respondents are primed about immigration before answering questions on redistribution preferences (Alesina et al., 2018). Second, to change deservingness considerations, some individuals are also presented with evidence that the economic situation in Venezuela – the main cause of the Venezuelan shock – is improving. The results of the experiment confirm the null results.

Immigration has been a highly salient issue across Europe in recent decades. Among scholars, one important debate is about whether immigration is eroding support for the welfare state especially among working class and lower educated people. Although earlier research claims a positive link between support for immigration and redistribution, some evidence suggests combining anti-immigration attitudes with support for redistribution is common in some countries. Yet it is unclear whether these attitudinal configurations are stable over time and across socio-economic groups.  
Hence, we ask, first, to what extent has the association between attitudes towards immigration and income redistribution changed across European countries? Second, how do the attitudinal configurations change over time? Third, does the change in attitudinal configurations differ across occupational and educational groups?
Using cross-national data from the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2020, we conduct a country-based trends analysis of the correlation between the attitudes, followed by an analysis of changes in the attitudinal configurations to account for potential non-linear shifts in the attitudinal relationship. We then apply multilevel modelling to assess shifts in specific combinations of immigration and redistribution attitudes by social strata.
Results show an increasingly positive correlation over time, particularly in Northern and Western Europe. This positive trend is largely driven by a growing number of people supporting both immigration and redistribution. Anti-immigration combined with pro-redistribution attitudes decreased over time more among workers than among the higher-grade service class. Finally, the likelihood of higher educated people combining pro-immigration with pro-redistribution attitudes increases over time.

The rise of anti-immigrant sentiments and polarization in the public opinion towards immigration is a major concern in countries across the world. At the same time, research repeatedly shows that individuals are not well informed about basic facts about immigration. Thus, one potential way to influence public opinion is to improve the population’s knowledge about immigration. Indeed, single studies show that attitudes shift in a more pro-immigrant direction after informing participants about factual information about the topic. We argue that even if correct information shifts opinions in the intended direction, opinion polarization (i.e., the spread of the opinion distribution) might remain the same. This study is a meta-reanalysis of experimental studies where participants in the treatment group are informed about aspects of immigration to their respective countries, and attitudes towards immigration are assessed in the treatment and a non-informed control group. Importantly, we study not only the average effect of the information treatment, but also how it affects the overall distribution in the treatment group. Preliminary results show that there is indeed a positive effect of political information in the expected direction. However, we also find that providing information does not reduce the spread of attitudes in the treatment group. Our findings suggest that fact-checking, and other ways of disseminating the same information to everyone, cannot fulfill one important promise: they cannot bring together individuals in their views, and thus, are unable to facilitate consensus building among the public.

One of the most robust findings in the literature on attitudes towards immigrants is that people with a university degree hold more positive attitudes than those without. Following the Western education expansion that started in the 1980s, some have optimistically viewed education as a panacea for hostility towards immigrants and minorities. Yet, evidence suggests that attitudes towards immigrants have not liberalised over time. We posit that current literature has been unable to explain this puzzle because it has overlooked the fact that new generations are closely connected to previous ones through family links. Using UKHLS data for the UK and a multilevel model that makes use of unique data on the attitudes of two generations of families, we examine the extent to which the relationship between education and attitudes is rooted in the family. We investigate variation in attitudes towards immigrants between and within families. Between families, we examine if and why parental education matters for attitude formation. We explore two mechanisms: socio-economic positioning and socialisation. We employ rich measures of parental socio-economic positioning, such as fine-grained measures of economic advantage at the administrative level of parents’ residence, and indicators of contact with minorities. Within families, we examine if social mobility is why some individuals hold warmer attitudes than their parents. Our research contributes to understanding why and how attitudes of tolerance overlap with educational stratification. This will offer further insight into the broader implications of education policy and educational inequalities, whilst also explaining what drives social change over time.

Spatial approaches have become increasingly important in the literature on social mobility. They allow to identify territorial characteristics associated with social mobility. We argue however that an important part of those results can be explained by the distribution of social groups in the territory and the compositional effects it generates. If social mobility is particularly high in a given geographical area, this can be partly explained by the fact that it is an area in which a particular social has a strong presence, and by the fact that this group is very mobile. To evidence the importance of this compositional effect, we use data from the French Labor Force Survey to describe mobility regimes from the 1950 onwards. We have data on 2,340,244 individuals and we can measure their workplace at the regional level (NUTS 3).We firstly show that mobility is stronger in regions with a higher GDP. Secondly, we show that most of this effect can be explained by the fact that there are more managers and professionals in the richer regions. We show then that when the share of managers and professional increases in a regions, it increases social mobility and reduce inequalities of opportunity because people from all social class can more easily access to this class. Understanging spatial variations of social mobility requires therefore a careful examination of the interaction between the social composition of region and mobility factors.

How do opportunities for intergenerational mobility depend on the place where you live? We address this question using European Social Survey data, studying the association in occupational rank and social class between parents and children, and how it varies by region of residence. Both ways of measuring occupational mobility produce similar results but there is a clear distinction between absolute upward mobility, largely driven by structural change, and relative mobility which is thought to closer reflect (in)equality of opportunity. Capital regions are hubs of absolute upward, but not always relative, mobility. Absolute upward mobility is correlated with a range of human capital, labor market, demographic, and socio-spatial characteristics indicating that the place one lives in matters for mobility outcomes. By contrast, the only robust predictor of relative mobility is income differences between social classes. More inequality entails less mobility, and this relationship holds within countries.

Across place and time, individuals’ socio-economic outcomes and opportunities critically depend on the family into which they were born and by whom they were raised. Scholarship on the transmission of inequality provides overwhelming evidence that the relationship between individuals’ and their descendants’ social position is positive and strong, and that it persists across several generations. At the same time, research on immigrant integration prominently finds that children of migrants seem to be exceptionally socially mobile. Our objective is therefore to examine whether migration can break the rigid link between family members’ social destinies. We make three contributions to existing research: First, we propose a theoretical model that pinpoints where precisely migration disrupts the transmission process (returns to or heritability of endowments) based on a multigenerational approach. Second, we provide estimates of persistence and the effect of migration on the perpetuation of education, occupation, and income across three generations. We use high-quality survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel that allows us to link children, parents, and grandparents alongside international education data. Finally, we provide novel evidence on social reproduction and mobility within migrant families in one of the largest immigrant societies worldwide, comparing different origin groups. Our findings highlight how far the decision to move places can have long-lasting effects on social reproduction—a phenomenon consistently shown to stand firm against significant structural, institutional, and policy change.

Amid renewed interest in geographical inequalities in life chances, we present new analysis of intergenerational occupational mobility across counties in England, Wales and Scotland using Understanding Society data. We employ two different measures of occupational position: the well-established International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI) and the newly proposed occupational earnings potential scale (OEP). We first estimate relative mobility based on place of birth, and then separately for individuals who remain living in the place they were born and those who have moved away. We identify considerable spatial variation in rates of relative mobility within Great Britain, and find that people who moved away from their county of birth had notably rates of upward mobility than those who remain in the place they were born. 

Since mid-twentieth century, rates of overweight and obesity have risen tremendously in children and adolescents. One group at risk for developing overweight or obesity includes children and adolescents in single-parent families. However, the increased risk of being overweight or obese for children and adolescents in single-parent families is much stronger in some European countries than in others. The aim of this study is to examine two potential explanations for these cross-national differences. On the individual level, we hypothesise that social support by family, friends, classmates, and teachers reduces the association between living with a single parent and the likelihood of being overweight or obese. On the national level, we hypothesise that high levels of national school-based health promotion reduces this association. For this study, we use survey data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) dataset on adolescents aged 11 to 15 from 44 countries and their family structure, body mass index (BMI), and perceived social support. We complement the HBSC dataset with WHO data on national-level school health programmes and policies. We conduct mixed multilevel logistic regressions with respondents clustered in countries and schools and being overweight or obese as a binary dependent variable. Our preliminary results confirm that living with a single parent increases the likelihood of being overweight or obese. We do not find evidence that social support reduces this association; results on the moderating effects of school-based health promotion are soon expected.
Keywords: overweight, obesity, single-parent families, social support, school-based health promotion, survey data

Widowhood is a significant predictor of loneliness in older adults. However, research examining whether social relations impact the effect of widowhood on loneliness is limited. Especially the impact of the parent-child relationship on parental well-being during widowhood is understudied. It is not clear whether an increase of the parent-child relationship quality mitigates the impact of widowhood on loneliness.
Using survey data from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) from 1996 to 2021, we conducted fixed effects regression models to estimate changes in emotional and social loneliness during the transition to widowhood. We also examined whether the parent-child relationship becomes closer during the transition to widowhood, and whether such changes in the parent-child relationship quality alleviate the negative effects of widowhood on loneliness.
Our findings indicate that the surviving spouse experiences more social and emotional loneliness than before widowhood. Furthermore, in the wake of widowhood, the frequency of parent-child contact as well as emotional closeness to one's own children intensifies. Simultaneously, a close emotional relationship diminishes the feeling of emotional and social loneliness in widowed individuals. Mediation analyses reveal a significant but exceptionally weak mediation through emotional closeness to children from widowhood to loneliness. Interestingly, the indirect effect was only significant for women, but not for men. Overall, our results suggest that the relationships between parents and their children become closer after widowhood, and that parent-child relationships play a pivotal role for the subjective well-being of widowed individuals.

Guided by the intergenerational solidarity model and leveraging rich data from the European Social Survey round 10 (2020-2022), we examine different forms of contact between parents aged 60 or above and their children.
 
Results highlight considerable variability in contact prevalence across countries, with frequent face-to-face meetings still being the prevalent form of frequent parent-child contact.  In almost all countries we find evidence of accumulation between traditional contact (face-to-face and telephone) and between digital forms of contact (video and messages). Digital contact also accumulates with traditional remote contact via telephone, challenging assumptions of new technologies replacing older communication tools. Only in some countries we find evidence of substitution effects between face-to-face and digital contact.
 
Emotional closeness emerges as a universal driver of contact of all forms, while geographical proximity shapes face-to-face interactions. Internet use and digital skills positively associate with digital contact. Notably, the study also identifies factors influencing accumulation or substitution effects between contact forms.
 
Our findings suggest that fostering digital inclusion among older adults is crucial, emphasizing the role of digital literacy in maintaining familial connections. Overall, our study provides insights into adapting familial bonds amidst the digital transformation.

Ageing well and healthy is becoming more and more important in Europe’s ageing societies. At the same time, people with a migrant history represent a significant proportion of the older population in Europe, given globalised living and migration patterns. For this group, social integration and its relationship to health and well-being is of particular importance, as they are confronted with additional migration-related challenges in old age and that this ultimately has an impact on the ageing process and subjective well-being. Previous research has traditionally focused either on the health of the older general population or on the health of migrants of irrespective of age. We combine both perspectives by investigating the extent to which ageing and social relationships are connected and how changes in social contacts ultimately affect well-being in old age comparing migrants and non-migrants. We use data from the Social Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to analyse a) if and how social networks change in later life and b) the relationship of social networks and well-being in later life, in each step focussing on differences between migrants and non-migrants, as well as the intersectionality with gender. The sample contains adults aged 50 years and above who participated in the fourth, sixth and eighth wave of SHARE. For both research questions, we use fixed-effects regression models, one focussing on change of networks over the age span and the other on the change in networks.

Previous studies examining the relationship between within-couple income distribution and subjective well-being have mostly found a negative relationship between the woman’s relative income and SWB for both women and men, or only for men. This has been interpreted as reflecting the impact of traditional attitudes toward gender roles. However, the causal effect hasn’t been directly examined.
In this study, we analyze the impact on partners’ life satisfaction when the woman earns more than the man. We use data from the 2015 EU-SILC survey linked to the subjective well-being module of the Household Budget and Living Conditions Survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office.
The causal effect is estimated using a regression discontinuity design. Since the social norm of the man as the primary breadwinner is violated when the woman’ income exceeds the man’s, there is a distinct cutoff point (the woman’s relative income is 0.5) at which this norm violation occurs. Therefore, we compare the life satisfaction of observations just above and below this cutoff. We use both continuity-based, local polynomial and local randomization approaches.
Consistent with the fact that gender attitudes are more traditional in Hungary compared to other European countries, we found that both men and women are less satisfied when the woman’s income exceeds that of the man. The results suggest that the conflict between gender role expectations and socio-economic realities can lead to a decline in well-being. Accordingly, more equal role expectations and division of labor within the household can increase the satisfaction of household members.

In the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic the implementation of lockdown measures leaded to a general redefinition of working arrangements, introducing the concept of essential workers as well as policies favouring working from home. This paper focuses on the UK and the Netherlands, two countries that are similar in high shares of female part-time work but differed in welfare provisions and security during the pandemic. It aims at providing a description of who were essential workers in these two countries, and testing theorethical mechanisms by addressing the question whether the status of essential workers has affected the bargaining position of partners, shaping how housework and childcare were divided within the couple. . We use longitudinal data for both countries: “Effects of the outbreak of COVID-19” and COGIS modules from LISS for the Netherlands, and Understanding Societies: UKHLS for the UK. We rely on panel fixed effects models. Our main dependent variable is the relative distribution of women’s involvement in housework in a couple. The main independent variable is a couple level indicator of whom is into an essential occupation (none, one partner, both). Controls include total weekly working hours and working from home arrangements. Results show that for both countries being an essential worker is associated with a small negative but significant reduction in women participation to housework, even after controlling for working from home arrangements.

Even though research has emphasized the risk of a gendered sample selection bias for the elderly decades ago, the empirical literature on old-age inequalities up to date seems to be largely unaware of it. This article raises awareness of this issue by revealing the gendered sample selectivity for the population aged 65 or older for two popular sample criteria, the self-reported retirement status and pension receipt, for most European countries. 
The results reveal that up to more than half of elderly women are excluded when using these sample measures. The gender selection bias varies largely across countries and is less pronounced in post-socialist or social-democratic welfare states. Visualizing the work trajectories by sample status indicates that particularly women with long trajectories of unpaid care work and men with large shares of self-employment, unemployment, and longer educational trajectories do not declare themselves retired or do not receive pensions.  
Studies using such sample criteria to capture the population of the elderly likely underestimate the level of inequalities. The selectivity arising from these two sample criteria can be particularly severe in large country comparison studies for which the sample bias more easily remains undetected. Such studies across many countries become more popular due to the availability of harmonized surveys such as the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe or the Health and Retirement Study.  

As the economic outcomes of women continue to lag behind those of men, social scientists have sought to examine the key mechanisms behind these enduring inequalities. In new home economics, theories of sex-role specialisation present the sexed allocation of paid and unpaid care work as utility maximising leading us to expect a maintenance of gendered economic inequalities. While in sociology, adherence to gendered norms of sex-role specialisation have been shown to have well-being effects, with men found to exhibit increased well-being when they out-earn their (female) partners (e.g. Gash and Plagnol 2020). While many egalitarians reject the suggestion that there may be some logic and function to the maintenance of gendered inequalities, with accusations of ‘gender essentialism’ to the suggestion that women may have different preferences to men (e.g. Crompton and Lyonette 2005), the puzzle as at why such consistent gendered inequalities persist deserve attention. This paper extends previous analyses by examining whether the positive well-being effects of male breadwinning found in individual country analysis hold across a range of diverse national contexts. We deploy the 2018 ad-hoc module on ‘Material Deprivation and Well-being’, of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). We find men to be significantly less happy if they are minority earners and find women to be ambivalent to their earning status, in a country fixed-effects model across 32 countries. Our cross-level country interactions reveal some evidence of variance in tendency by context, with material deprivation and enhanced divorce risk increasing the association between breadwinning and well-being.   

The class ceiling reflects higher earnings for individuals from privileged parental social classes at the top of occupational hierarchies. Building on cultural matching theory, the current study proposes job task segregation as a mechanism for the class ceiling. We argue that individuals from privileged backgrounds may perform higher-paid tasks within the same occupation. Additionally, the study introduces the concept of the class floor, where individuals from higher social classes are shielded from lowearnings in low-pay occupations. The study explores whether these class effects are present in Germany, a country characterized by a rigid social structure and low social mobility. Employing high-quality survey data, the study utilizes the NEPS SC6 data to examine within-occupation variation in job tasks linked with detailed earnings data and parental class at age 14. Employing OLS regression with occupational fixed effects, the study aims to uncover and explain class effects on earnings, contributing to a nuanced understanding of earnings inequality at a granular, within-occupation level.

Occupations are the cornerstone of research in social stratification. However, they are unwieldy categorical indicators that do not easily translate into hierarchical measures. One solution is to order occupations by socio-economic advantage as done by the ISEI. However, ISEI mixes antecedents (education) and consequence (income) of occupations, is based on a limited data source (men surveyed between 1968 and 1982) and provides no intuitive metric (what is a 10-point increase?). We therefore present a new linear scale that reflects occupations’ earnings potential (OEP) as measured by occupations’ median earnings. Values of OEP are expressed relative to the earnings distribution of the entire workforce. If the median earning in an occupation is identical to the median earning of the whole workforce (p50), then the value for this occupation’s earnings potential is 50. This index is then constructed with labour market data for men and women in Germany (SOEP 1984-2019), Sweden (register 1970-2021), Switzerland (LFS 1991-2021) and the U.S. (CPS 1970-2021). OEP values are highly correlated between countries and decades, with correlations above 0.75. This stability in the occupational ranking confirms the Treiman constant and leads us to construct one single cross-country OEP indicator. The construct and criterion validity of this linear indicator are examined in detail, and we illustrate its usefulness with an analysis of intergenerational mobility based on the European Social Survey.

The egalitarian Scandinavian welfare states have historically been characterized by comparatively high levels of intergenerational mobility but have in recent decades seen growing economic inequalities and large-scale immigration from lower income origin countries. To what extent does the Scandinavian countries extend equal opportunities for upward economic mobility for the coming-of-age children of (disadvantaged) immigrant parents? In this study, we provide a systematic comparison of intergenerational earnings mobility among immigrant minorities in Denmark (to be added), Norway, and Sweden using population-wide administrative data of high quality. Our results reveal a striking cross-national similarity of intergenerational mobility in Norway and Sweden, where the overrepresentation of immigrant parents in the bottom rungs of the earnings distribution is strongly reduced among their adult children. Although economic disparities exist relative to same-age peers of native background, the general patten of strongly improved economic status is documented for children of immigrants from all origin regions. Conditional on parental earnings rank, we also find that children of immigrants tend to experience broadly comparable patterns of earnings attainment as children of native-born parents who grew up in similar economic family contexts. Our key finding of Scandinavian commonalities in intergenerational economic mobility in a broad set of national ancestry minorities suggests that strong welfare-state institutions provide economic opportunities to children of disadvantaged immigrants but is also a call for more systematic cross-national studies on this topic across institutionally diverse European host countries.

We advance the literature on the role of marriage in intergenerational mobility by developing a new approach, which is based on the correlation of siblings' life cycle incomes. Our approach not only nests existing methods but also introduces a novel decomposition of the total family background effect into direct and indirect effects attributable to marriage. This indirect effect is further decomposed into two components: the sibling correlation in marriage, and the marriage premium (i.e., returns to being married) net of family unobservables. We apply our approach to analyze brothers' and sisters' lifecycle earnings and family income, utilizing data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Our findings are twofold. For women, at all career stages, we observe that marriage does not mediate the total family background effect on individual earnings. However, it does mediate a significant portion for family income—approximately one quarter. This discrepancy, we demonstrate, is due to a very large net marriage premium in husbands' income. In contrast, for men, marriage mediates the total family background effect on both individual earnings and family income across all career stages. The difference in mediation between these two types of income is small, stemming from the low net marriage premium in wives' income. These results have profound implications for theories of reproduction and mobility. They suggest that the economic benefits of marriage—and their influence on family income and individual earnings—vary significantly between genders and across different stages of careers.

Since 2015/16, many of the refugees who arrived in Germany have found employment and have received long-term stay permits. But have they successfully integrated into the German society? Since finding a partner within the receiving society is considered a strong indicator of social integration for immigrants, the present paper examines the partnership formation of refugees in Germany in comparison to both established migrants and native Germans. A crucial determinant of partnership formation are the individual’s preferences and characteristics, with individuals typically striving for partners with similarity in cultural resources. We therefore also assess the role of individuals’ cultural resources, in terms of their religious denomination, for partnership formation. First results show that refugees are more likely to engage in interethnic and interreligious partnerships compared to established migrants and natives. For Muslim respondents and refugees, more committed partnerships are not common, which significantly differentiates them from non-Muslim migrants and the native-born majority. In addition, results show that for Muslim respondents (refugees and migrants), casual partnerships are considerably less likely than for the rest of young people residing in Germany. Hence, the Muslim religion plays a decisive role in shaping the propensity of young people to engage in casual relationships.

In ethnically diverse societies, the number of multi-ethnic individuals born to inter-ethnic unions is on the rise and they play a key role as 'bridges' between different ethnic groups. Analysing their partnership choices is vital for comprehending the dynamics of ethnic boundaries and evaluating the influence of inter-ethnic marriages on social solidarity across generations. We examine three main questions: 1) How do multi-ethnic individuals’ partnering patterns compare to those of their mono-ethnic counterparts? 2) What explains partner choices among multi-ethnic individuals? 3) Does forming a mixed union raise the probability that the resulting offspring forms mixed unions, too? Building upon literature on immigrant assimilation and intermarriage, we adapt the concepts of ‘endogamy’ and ‘exogamy’ to the background compositions of multi-ethnic individuals: We distinguish between ‘strict endogamy,’ ‘majority-leaning endogamy,’ ‘minority-leaning endogamy,’ and ‘exogamy.’ Due to a lack of data, very little is known about the detailed partnering patterns of multi-ethnic individuals. To address this gap, we leverage Dutch full-population registry data. We show that multi-ethnic individuals rarely find partners of the exact same ethnic combination and partner more often with natives than their mono-ethnic counterparts. Yet, the size of this gap differs depending on the ethnic group of the minority parent. Multi-level logistic regression models and sibling fixed effect models suggest that both structural and cultural factors shape partner choice among multi-ethnic individuals and that the children of those who partner exogamously are more likely to partner exogamously as well. 

Against the backdrop of the 2015/16 refugee migration, when many young unmarried men from Syria and Afghanistan arrived in Germany and have since faced difficulties in finding co-ethnic (marriage) partners, we investigate (1) to what extent they are open to partnerships with members of the German population, including those with a migration background, and (2) what the reactions of the German population are. Using virtually identical factorial survey experiments conducted in two datasets - the 9th wave of the CILS4EU-DE and the 1st wave of the PARFORM survey of male refugees from Syria and Afghanistan - our study compares the preferences on both sides and tests whether they match the characteristics of the respective populations. In both surveys, respondents were randomly assigned to experimental groups that differed in their descriptions of potential partners along several dimensions and were asked to rate their willingness to enter into a romantic relationship with the person described. In our analyses, we first compare the partner preferences and actual characteristics of young male refugees and young women from the German population on the dimensions of education, religion and religiosity. Second, we identify potential matches by analysing the preferences and characteristics of those young male refugees and young women who best correspond to the respective preferences and characteristics of the other side. By comparing the preferences of both sides and taking into account the respective characteristics of potential partners, we gain a better understanding of the potential for partnership formation between refugees and members of the host society.

Using the data from the new TeO2 survey, we aim to explore the patterns of (in)stability of interethnic unions among immigrants and their descendants in France. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first French quantitative study looking at the separation risk in interethnic unions. We define interethnic unions as unions between an immigrant or a second-generation descendant of immigrants on the one hand, and a native person or a person of a different foreign background on the other. Our results show that exogamy is associated with an increased separation risk, both among immigrants and second-generation descendants of immigrants. This result is particularly pronounced among immigrant women and second-generation men. On the other hand, co-ethnic unions between one immigrant partner and one second-generation partner do not show a higher separation risk, as compared to endogamous unions between two immigrants or two second-generation partners. The study also explores whether the increased separation risk in interethnic unions can be explained by partner differences with respect to other dimensions of social affiliation. We find that the lower stability of interethnic unions may be partly explained by religious differences between the partners.

In being female and from a different ethnic background than the host society, female refugees experience not only gender- and ethnicity-based obstacles but also an additional dimension of social inequality due to the intersection of these two categories. Initial studies show that only 30% of the female refugees entered employment seven years after they arrived in Germany, whereas 70% of male refugees did so in the same period. To examine potential mechanisms for overcoming those obstacles, we focus on the potentials of high-value port-of-entry neighborhoods as information providers and role-model mediators. We combine individual-level administrative data on female refugees from the German Federal Employment Agency with georeferenced information on gendered employment rates for natives, foreigners, and refugees on 1km x 1km grid cells. In exploiting the variation within broader neighborhoods and between grid cells, we estimate the causal effect of full-time employment rates of female neighbors on female refugees’ employment probability. Initial results show a strong and positive effect of the female neighbors’ full-time employment on the refugee women’s employment probability in the first three years after arrival in Germany.

In increasingly diverse and unequal societies, maintaining social cohesion is a key challenge. Positive intergroup contact plays a focal role in bringing groups closer to each other. Such contact can take place in different settings, including neighborhoods and civic organizations such as sports clubs or cultural associations. Yet, earlier research has demonstrated the pervasiveness of social segregation in these settings, which curtails the scope for positive intergroup contact. As the precise origins and consequences of this segregation remain unclear, we examine to what extent segregation arises from homophilous preferences vis-à-vis unequal opportunity structures and in how far it restricts the bridging character of contact within these settings. Our analyses draw on two complementary survey modules that the authors recently fielded in the Longitudinal Internet study for the Social Sciences (LISS) and the TRansitions Into Active Living study (TRIAL) in the Netherlands. They feature rich observational information about the social composition of and contact patterns within respondents’ current civic organizations and neighborhoods. Moreover, they cover three conjoint experiments in which participants choose between neighborhoods, civic organizations, and sports clubs that differ, among other things, in their socioeconomic and ethnic composition. We can thus compare people’s preferences across different settings. Preliminary findings suggest that higher-educated individuals avoid settings that would expose them to lower-educated individuals. Conversely, ethnic segregation cannot be explained by homophilous preferences. In sum, our study provides a novel analysis of the pathways through which different social settings become and remain segregated and thereby inhibit intergroup contact.

Literature shows that feeling stigmatized leads to psychological and labor market related obstacles. In contrast, there is less research on the spatial and social context in which stigma-consciousness emerges and intensifies. In this article, we investigate the neighborhood as mechanism to explain stigma-consciousness among the unemployed. We rely on the labeling approach and social contagion models to derive hypotheses about the effect of informal societal control and the scope of the employment norm. We test these hypotheses in combining rich survey data (PASS) with highly reliable georeferenced administrative 1x1km grid cell data on neighborhood unemployment. Linear multi-level models show no significant correlation between neighborhood unemployment and the individual’s stigma-consciousness. However, modelling the relationship with quadratic terms reveals a tipping point: The neighborhood’s unemployment positively affects the individual’s stigma-consciousness when exceeding an unemployment quota of 30%. Our findings highlight the importance of local social norms and how they shape individuals’ perceptions.

Neighborhoods are a paramount aspect of sociological study and the social experience more generally; the inequality between them is evident in many realms, especially the concentration of crime. Despite a great deal of research on crime diffusion across urban areas, comparatively little is known about the influence of networks on this pattern. To better understand the distribution of crime across a city, I conduct a spatial examination of a large network of individuals involved in arrests. Neighborhood connections can be defined by linking the neighborhood in which an arrested person resides to the neighborhood in which the respective crime occurred. This connection creates a social tie between two neighborhoods that theoretically allows for the flow of ideas, information, or resources across a city. I use crime incident reports and arrest data from Boston, US to create and examine the network of neighborhoods connected by crime. I examine how the characteristics of the ties between neighborhoods, including crime types, inform the understanding of urban crime. Identifying networked patterns of crime provides more information for the formulation of appropriate social policies aimed at crime prevention and improving inequalities across communities.

While the proportion of explained variance is well-defined in linear models, Snijders and Bosker (1994) demonstrated that this concept is ill-defined in linear multilevel models. Whenever a researcher adds a level-1 predictor to the model, the level-2 variance may increase. This is because the level-2 variance also depends on the level-1 variance. This problem is more pronounced when there are few observations per cluster. We present a solution to this problem, which allows researchers to decompose variance components from the null models into parts explained and unexplained by level-1 predictors. We also offer an extension that incorporates level-2 predictors. Our approach is based on multivariate multilevel modeling and provides a complete decomposition of the gross or null model variance components. We give an example analyzing sibling similarities in lifecycle income.

Mounting evidence suggests that delayed parenthood benefits children in multiple respects (McLanahan & Jacobsen, 2015; Barclay & Myrskylä, 2016; Myrskylä et al., 2017; Cantalini et al., 2020). Conventional explanations focus on family-level factors such as parents’ maturity, financial stability, responsible parenthood, etc. (McLanahan, 2004; McLanahan & Jacobsen, 2015; Duncan et al., 2018; Cantalini et al., 2020). What is less often considered, however, is that part of the advantage might be driven by societal-level factors, such as improved social and economic opportunities: i.e., later-born children fare better because they enjoy better access to better health, nutrition, education, etc. (Barclay & Myrskylä, 2016; Myrskylä et al., 2017). One tempting solution might be to relate family-level factors and societal-level factors to the effects of parents’ age at birth and the child’s birth year respectively – a strategy followed in one of the recent research papers (Barclay & Myrskylä, 2016). However, in this paper, I show that this strategy is still unsatisfying and can be viewed as a peculiar instance of the fundamental problem of age-period-cohort analysis (Fosse & Winship, 2019).
The analogy with the APC problem is in the arithmetic fact that parents’ age at birth = child’s birth year – parent’s birth year, and it is possible to argue that parent’s birth year is related to a whole set of processes of potential relevance for child outcomes. For instance, it is reasonable to expect it to positively correlate with parents’ education, reflecting educational upgrading predicting higher parental SES (Breen, 2010; Breen & Müller, 2020), which then can be related to children’s advantage (Breen & Jonsson, 2005; Hout, 2015; Torche, 2015). Yet more generally, a parent’s birth year would reflect a range of generation-specific parental experiences that are relevant to children’s outcomes (e.g., education, socialization, etc.). Furthermore, it can be plausibly related to the parent’s age at birth (Mills et al., 2011; Lesthaeghe, 2014) and is therefore also an essential confounder to be controlled for to identify the effects of the parent’s age at birth and child’s birth year (or at least warrant their interpretations in the spirit of family-level and societal-level mechanisms). However, the fact that the three form linear combinations of each other does not solve the collinearity issue and makes statistical identification impossible.
I therefore relate the problem to the problem of APC analysis and discuss the solution recently proposed by Fosse & Winship (2019). For an empirical application and demonstration, I use data from the Generations and Gender Survey, Wave 1 for Germany. My analysis shows that even a partial identification using Fosse & Winship’s method is complicated, and even when a few plausible identifying assumptions (e.g., all linear effects being positive) are used. On the other hand, I show that naïve mediation analysis aiming to explain the independent relationships of either parenthood age, parents’ or child’s birth years via plausible mediating mechanisms (e.g., SES) to child outcomes is, nevertheless, possible and that the mediated quantities can even be point-identified. My application also suggests that the utility of Fosse & Winship’s proposal spans beyond the APC problem and that it can be extended to other situations, where identification is undermined due to perfect collinearity.

Our study investigates the potential of machine learning techniques for advanced data analysis, focusing on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 data. Our primary goals are two-fold: first, to analyze and quantify the effects of various influencing factors on educational outcomes. This in turn allows to compare the factors within a country and across countries.
While traditional correlation measures such as total and partial correlation and statistical models like linear multilevel models are suitable to capture the extent and strength of linear relationships, they do not allow to fully capture the potential non-linear complexity of educational data.
We therefore employ non-linear machine learning models, especially random forests, to address this gap and achieve a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of these multifaceted interactions, whereas incorporating the multi-level structure of the data is an particular interesting challenge for themselve which we also discuss.
Our approach includes a detailed examination of methods such as feature importance measures, partial dependencies, and residual analysis using the recently introduced techniques of double machine learning. Each technique is thoroughly discussed, highlighting its specific strengths and weaknesses. This balanced perspective emphasizes the value of these advanced analytical tools in dissecting the intricate dynamics of the PISA 2022 data.
Through this methodology, our research aims to provide a deeper insight into the varying educational factors, showcasing the significant role of machine learning in educational data analysis and its ability to reveal complex patterns and influences that traditional methods may overlook.

We show how the time gap between the first and the second child, also referred to as birth spacing, relates to women’s employment prospects following the second birth. We argue that employment consequences of birth spacing differ for women with different employment histories before the pregnancies. We use SHARELIFE retrospective survey to construct completed employment-fertility histories for women from 12 European countries. We proceed in two steps. First, we apply sequence analysis to distinguish between four groups of women based on their pre-birth employment trajectories: home-stayers, early and late workers, and dropouts. For each group of women we then estimate complementary log-log regressions to show how the birth spacing relates to their risk of entering/dropping employment. The results show that birth spacing matters for employment prospects of all groups of women except for the group of women who started working early in their lives and continued working after the first birth (early workers). For those who continued working after the first birth, but enter the labor market at later ages, the lowest risk of dropping employment is observed when the time gap between pregnancies is of moderate length (3 to 7 years). Among women who leave their jobs after the first birth (dropouts) the lowest chances of re-entering employment are when the second child appears late (more than 7 years after the first one). Finally, for the group of home-staying women the chances of entering employment are lowest when the second birth appears close to the first birth.

The present study broadens the knowledge base by studying the labor supply side and asks how the transition to motherhood affects reservation wages as a key determinant of labor supply, job search behavior, labor market participation, wage negotiations, and realized wages. The second goal of our study is to investigate to what extent reservation wages of mothers before the transition to a new job translate into actual wages after the transition. While a narrow economic perspective might lead to the prediction that higher reservation wages on average lead to higher actual wages, a more nuanced socioeconomic view suggests that reservation wage changes do not necessarily need to translate into realized wages, especially for mothers.
Our analysis is based on 15 waves of German panel data and covers 11,230 observations of 2,720 women. Based on time-distributed fixed effects models, we find that, compared to the time before motherhood, childbirth increases the reservation wage on average by four percent in the birth year. In the following years, the effect slightly increases. In further analyses, we find no anticipation effects and that higher income needs of the household after childbirth seem to play a major role for the increase in reservation wages. However, we only find a positive association between reservation wages previous to the transition to a new job (i.e., in t0) and realized wages after the transition (i.e., in t1) for childless women but not for first-time mothers. Thus, wage claims do not seem to improve the wages of mothers.

In this study, I focus on work-level characteristics, most specifically paid maternity leave and occupational characteristics, and how they are associated with women’s return to work after the birth of their first child. I test the overarching hypothesis that specific aspects of occupations, which directly relate to tangible constraints and advantages, influence mothers' decisions regarding whether and when to return to work. Using the extensive employment history data of a contemporary cohort of Americans the NLSY97 and the rich dataset of occupational characteristics O*NET, I study the interplay between paid maternity leave, occupational characteristics and mothers' return to work after childbirth. I first test a resource substitution hypothesis and explore the interaction between paid maternity leave and four key occupational characteristics (autonomy, authority, physical demands, and caring demands) on the likelihood of returning to work within 4 months of childbirth. I then investigate the timing of return to work by occupational characteristics and paid maternity leave. This study builds on recent papers by moving beyond individual predictors of mothers' employment outcomes to study how different occupational contexts may provide different advantages and disadvantages to combining work and family responsibilities. I find that paid maternity leave is an important pathway of mothers’ re-entry into the workplace. The results suggest however that occupational autonomy and caring demands are resources on which mothers can draw on to successfully combine motherhood and employment in the absence of paid maternity leave. Moreover, authority and autonomy act as push-pull factors into the workplace.

Meritocracy has become a widely accepted guiding principle in education – an ideology that can legitimize social reproduction and educational inequality. Recent scholarship on meritocratic beliefs (i.e., beliefs that success depends primarily on individual merit) suggests that meritocratic beliefs are positively associated with perceiving inequality as just and with a preference for equal distribution. The opposite has been found for nonmeritocratic beliefs (i.e., beliefs that success depends on luck or structural factors). This study revisits previous findings and tests whether perceiving inequality as just mediates the association between (non)meritocratic beliefs and distributive preferences (e.g., preference for equal distribution and preference for educational meritocracy). Furthermore, I propose that social differences in beliefs may partially explain differences in distributive preferences by social origin.The study uses data on applicants to medical schools in Germany, capturing three meritocratic beliefs and two nonmeritocratic beliefs about one’s own admission to medical school and about societal inequality in general, as well as applicants’ perceptions of justice and distributive preferences. Using structural equation modeling, the analyses confirm inequality-(de)legitimating consequences of (non)meritocratic beliefs. Furthermore, they reveal that structural beliefs influence distributive preferences through perceptions of justice, while beliefs in the importance of hard work for success influence them directly. The study sheds light on the different consequences of various meritocratic and nonmeritocratic beliefs. Finally, the results confirm that social differences in distributive preferences are partly driven by differences in beliefs, in particular by weaker structural beliefs among people from privileged backgrounds – a potential starting point for inequality-reducing policy interventions.

Findings are mixed with regard to differences across educational tracks in terms of political and civic engagement. The jury is still out on whether track differences result from the track enrolled, or from selection processes into tracks, and on the question through which mechanisms such causal or selection effects are manifested. We use newly collected panel data from the Netherlands, the Adolescent Panel Study of Democratic Values and School Careers (ADKS), to understand the role of schools and friendships for the development of democratic orientation between grade 7 and 10 in secondary schools. Our study advances upon previous research in the following ways. First, we study how tracking effects may be modified by both the tracking structure and cross-track friendships. Second, we study the development of democratic values over a long stretch of time, namely four consecutive years of secondary school. This advances not only on cross-sectional studies, but also on shorter-term longitudinal studies on track differences. Third, we study a wide range of democratic values, enabling us to see whether tracking effects manifest themselves more in some than in other outcomes. In particular, we study external vertical democratic orientations relating to the relationship between citizens and the state, and internal democratic orientations relating to people’s own perceived ability to take part in politics.

School segregation has emerged as a core challenge in Barcelona (Spain) in the past few years. Driven by wide margins of school choice, a large share of private subsidised schools, and sustained inaction from local government bodies, the uneven distribution of students across schools became a persistent issue. However, in 2018, the city’s educational authorities implemented the Shock Plan Against School Segregation (SP). This policy aims to promote a more balanced distribution of socially disadvantaged students by combining three policy instruments: targeted funding, preassigned school seats and quotas for socially disadvantaged students. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of SP on the distribution of socially disadvantaged students across schools in Barcelona. Using a quasi-experimental design based on an Interrupted Time Series analysis, the paper examines data from 2011 to 2023 to estimate the impact of SP on school segregation. Although there has been a significant decrease in school segregation and concentration from 2011 to 2023, the findings suggest that the SP's direct causal impact on this decline is relatively limited. The effectiveness of the SP varies significantly between socially disadvantaged and migrant students, as well as the different catchment areas and districts of the city. The analysis also shows that geographical factors such as residential segregation and school supply diversity, among others, significantly mediate the effectiveness of the SP in the different areas of the city. Finally, the paper elaborates on how the results of the case of Barcelona inform the ongoing debate about the effectiveness of desegregation policies.

Our study examines school-to-work transitions (STWTs) in Chile and Uruguay, focusing on the education-occupation linkage of these transitions. For the first time, we apply the linkage strength approach (DePrite et al. 2017) to Latin American countries (LAC), enabling a comparative analysis with findings from advanced economies. We use cross-sectional household survey data. Both countries encounter similar challenges in STWTs, characterized by a high prevalence of informal employment and low-skilled jobs. However, it is noteworthy that Chile exhibits significantly higher educational attainment compared to Uruguay. Our analysis reveals a stronger education-occupation linkage for recent cohorts in Chile and Uruguay. This linkage is strong at both higher and lower levels of education, in contrast to France, Germany, and the US. Differences in linkage strength between the two LAC primarily stem from differences in educational margins, particularly due to a notably larger share of low-qualified young adults in Uruguay. Moreover, despite the growing importance of vocational education in both LAC, general education credentials generate stronger linkages than vocational programs. Gender disparities predominantly arise from women’s higher educational attainment and gender-segregated labor markets, rather than from differences in the strength of the education-occupation associations. In both LAC, a higher linkage strength is associated with lower risks of informal work and higher wages. Conversely, vocational programs increase the risk of informal work and lower wages. Overall, the linkage strength patterns in Chile and Uruguay are in some aspects closer to France and Germany than the US is to either European country.

The role of educational fields in the intergenerational transmission of advantage is underexplored. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining the moderating role of fields of study on the first-job wages of Italian higher education graduates, using stepwise linear regression techniques. Our findings confirm that the effect of social class on first job wages is stronger in certain fields. We explore three alternative explanations for this interaction effect, including the low signalling of potential productivity in "soft fields," the differential impact of social class among females, and the variation in internal stratification and employment structures across fields. None of these hypotheses receive empirical support, suggesting the need for future research to identify other mechanisms underlying the moderating role of the horizontal dimension of education on the intergenerational transmission of social inequalities.

The research on gender inequality in education has shown that despite women surpassing men in educational achievement, they are still underrepresented in fields of science, technology, and math. Socialization processes, gender stereotypes, and perceptions of economic returns are all factors that contribute to this gender-gap in educational choices. A recent development in research has provided a more comprehensive view of the role of the family of origin in shaping these gender differences in educational choices. This work aims to contribute to this debate analysing how the siblings’ gender composition of the family of origin influence the underrepresentation of women in scientific and technical upper secondary schools. The aims of this article are to analyse whether living in a family with a gender-uniform composition or in a family with a mixed composition has an impact on gender differences in school choices during upper secondary education.

Spanish total fertility rate has been below 1.4 children per woman since the 1990s. One of the main drivers behind this low fertility is the rising number of childless women. Whether a voluntary choice or not, postponement of childbearing often results in childlessness The delay in parenthood could be partly driven by the increased instability in partnershipformation and/or adverse labor market conditions. Hence, childlessness is often the result of both more unstable and complex life course transitions. Nonetheless, previous studies have largely focused separately on either family or working trajectories to explain childlessness. We investigate the interdependencies between partnership and employment pathways that lead to childlessness after age 40 in a low-fertility context such as Spain. Using data from the 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey, we use multichannel sequence analysis to identify the most common patterns of partnering and employment trajectories, and then assess the likelihood of remaining childless for each pattern. We find eleven different clusters. Experiencing either long periods of singlehood or partnership instability (multiple partners and episodes of cohabitation) are highly associated with childlessness after age 40. In addition, when these trajectories are coupled with short employment spells and moves in and out of the labor market, the likelihood of remaining childless increases further. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, distinct from earlier crises, has catalyzed a significant shift towards working from home (WFH), transcending mere economic and health impacts. This study delves into the under-explored correlation between the pandemic-induced WFH surge and fertility intentions among workers. We hypothesize that WFH influences fertility through gendered divisions of domestic labor and job insecurity, with varying impacts across different demographic groups, particularly in terms of gender and parental status. Utilizing data from the Understanding Society COVID-19 Survey (Wave 9, September 2021), this research particularly examines the mediating roles of domestic labor division and job insecurity, revealing the intricate link between WFH and fertility intentions. The study employs a weighted moderated mediation structural equation model to analyze this complex relationship. Preliminary results indicate a dual effect of WFH on fertility intentions, namely a direct positive impact and an indirect negative impact through an escalated share in routine housework and childcare. This dual effect potentially explains previous inconsistent findings on this topic that indicated both positive and negative correlations. Furthermore, the impact of WFH appears more pronounced on short-term (within 3 years) fertility intentions compared to long-term ones. By evaluating the influence of both current and future WFH uses on fertility decisions, this research contributes significantly to the more comprehensive understanding of childbearing choices in a rapidly evolving work environment with WFH.

This study adopts a couple approach to explore the intricate link between socio-economic characteristics and reproductive behaviour, diverging from traditional research that predominantly examines individual traits. Focusing on the joint influence of both partners on fertility decisions, the study specifically investigates the impact of the occupational social class of both partners and their combination, on the transition to the first or second child. The United Kingdom serves as a unique context due to its distinctive interplay of welfare state dynamics, labour market regulations, and family policies. The hypothesis posits that couples whose members hold occupations with a secure career outlook and a good work-family balance will be more likely to experience childbirth and that the occupation of the female or male partner will differently influence transitions to the first or second child.
Using the Understanding Society data, the study focuses on different-sex couples, with the dependent variable being the event of first or second childbirth. The main independent variable is the combined occupational class of the couple. The main controls include education levels of both partners and household income, while additional factors such as partners’ working hours, contract types, ages, union type, and time since having the first child are considered. The study employs event history analysis models to estimate hazard rates for first and second childbirth, considering specific occupational class combinations. Preliminary descriptive results suggest potential variations in fertility behaviour for different class combinations, paving the way for further investigation.

In this paper, I explore both theoretically and empirically how work quality affects the hazard of first and second births. Specifically, I focus on three crucial dimensions of work quality: a) control over the job tasks and timetables, b) the level of intensity and strain involved in the job, and c) the level of complexity. I hypothesize that these dimensions can have an impact on fertility through different mechanisms, including role conflict and the level of mental and physical exhaustion and stress. Moreover, job dimensions are likely to operate differently for different occupational classes, leading to different effects of the job dimensions on fertility.
Data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and event history analyses are used. The results for second births indicate substantial negative effects of strain and lack of control, while no effects of complexity are found. Moreover, the effect of strain is particularly strong and statistically significant for full-time employees, while it has no effect for part-time time. The effects of control over how women perform their job tasks are strong and significant, while the effects of control on their timetables are weaker. The effects on first birth are much weaker and statistically significant for ""control"" only. Future steps in the analyses will explore the role of occupational class.

The underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) majors, leading to women’s underrepresentation in STEM occupations, is well documented. This study examines whether female STEM graduates are less likely to pursue STEM careers than their male counterparts and, importantly, considers the moderator role of labor market conditions and social origin. Using high-quality Spanish data, we find a pronounced gender gap in both initial and subsequent job placement (4-5 years after graduation). Notably, female STEM graduates are less likely to work in STEM occupations, even if they started their careers in a STEM occupation. Exploiting the significant impact of the Great Recession on the Spanish labor market (and thus intensified job competition), our study reveals a notably wider gender gap among individuals who graduated during the crisis compared to those who graduated during the subsequent economic recovery. This difference points to discriminatory hiring practices by STEM employers as a critical factor contributing to the observed gender gap. Finally, our intersectional analysis of gender and social origin provides suggestive evidence that the gender gap is notably wider among STEM graduates from low-SES backgrounds.

Women in higher education continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Explanations have focused primarily on mean sex differences in mathematics, reading, and science abilities. Another perspective examines sex differences in overall scores at the extremes of the performance distribution. However, there is consensus that these explanations are unlikely to play a major role in the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. Recently, intraindividual academic strengths have emerged as a possible alternative. These refer to a student’s relative advantage (best subject) in mathematics, reading, or science. Students’ academic strengths in turn contribute to decisions about educational paths. Girls’ intraindividual strength is typically reading, whereas boys’ is either mathematics or science. However, sex differences in intraindividual strengths remain largely unexplored especially at the extremes of the distribution and at the country level. To fill this scientific gap, we employ data from three recent waves (2012 – 2018) of the Programme For International Student Assessment (PISA) and explore sex differences in mathematics, reading, and science as intraindividual strengths at different levels of PISA proficiency. Additionally, we analyze the association between these sex differences and the Global Gender Gap Index again at different levels of PISA proficiency, building upon recent research that revealed a gender equality paradox in intraindividual strengths.

Previous literature has shown that women are less likely than men to be promoted to full professor positions. The significant gender gap in career advancements in academia results from many factors, including discrimination against female researchers in recruitment and promotion. We use data on the Italian academic population to describe men’s and women’s career paths. Using a multinomial logit model for the sub-sample of all associate professors who obtained the National Scientific Qualification (NSQ) for full professorship, we show that women are not only less likely to be promoted to the highest rungs of the academic ladder but are also promoted later than their male colleagues, and this is true even when controlling for scholarly productivity: men always come first. A slower career translates into a significant but often disregarded loss in life-long earnings, generating a gender income gap even in a university system with a fixed wage scale, such as the Italian one. Interviews with a random sample of 34 Italian female professors, some with fast careers, others with a slow career or not (yet) promoted full professor, show a weak collective awareness of the systematic gender discrimination highlighted by the data and a total lack of reporting of economic issues in terms of gender inequality.

The tertiary education sector in Germany has seen significant recent growth, resulting in a heightened number of individuals obtaining doctoral degrees. A doctorate is not only a prerequisite for an academic career but is also considered a general professional qualification. Given the constrained employment opportunities within academia, most doctorates must seek employment in other sectors.
This prompts an investigation into whether these highly educated individuals secure employment commensurate with their qualifications, exploring potential gender disparities, given that women typically face a heightened risk of job mismatch compared to men.
If individuals are mismatched employed, where their level of training exceeds job requirements, it leads to underutilized human capital. This has negative consequences at the individual level and can also incur social costs due to the inefficient allocation of resources.
This paper utilizes data from a recent panel study encompassing German doctorate holders, employing panel data analyses. By investigating two dimensions of job mismatch and addressing the overarching issue of gender disparities, our contribution adds depth to the existing literature by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the determinants and consequences of job mismatch among doctoral holders. Our emphasis lies on shedding light on the professional mobility, especially among female doctoral holders.
Preliminary results suggest a higher likelihood of job mismatch for female doctorates compared to male counterparts. Exiting academia notably increases the probability of securing positions where a doctorate is not required, particularly in non-research-oriented jobs within public and private sectors. Analyses reveal a detrimental impact of mismatch on both job satisfaction and wages, with women experiencing greater disadvantages than men.

This paper investigates whether LGB people receive higher returns from migration than heterosexual people in terms of income and mental health. LGB individuals are more likely to migrate, but few quantitative studies have estimated whether migration provides higher returns to LGB people. Some studies have shown that moving to a university city? for gay men is not only motivated by educational reasons. Other studies have shown that migrating to a different city can be a way to distance themselves from non-accepting family and friends for many LGB individuals. This suggests that socioeconomic motivations, central to much research on migration, might not be sufficient to explain migration behavior among LGB people. We use the Next Steps cohort study from the UK with information on migration between ages 15 and 25, as well as information on sexual identity (N = 6701, out which 324 LGB people). We find that LGB migrants have more income than LGB non-migrants. However, these returns are also observed, or even appear larger, for heterosexual people. We observe that the mental health of LGB migrants is substantially higher than the mental health of LGB non-migrants, whereas there is no difference in mental health at all between heterosexual migrants and non-migrants. These results underline the importance of non-socioeconomic factors for understanding the migration experiences of LGB people.

This article studies the career benefits of immigrants from informal strategies for navigating the internal labor markets of German firm. We use the Linked Employer-Employee dataset from the German Institute for Employment Research with survey-based information on 16 thousand establishments and administrative information on 1.8 million individuals to follow their working lives. A novel data design allows us to consider the role that organizational structures and work histories play in the economic integration of immigrants from a career perspective. We develop the concept of organization exposure, measured by the positions held within a firm with respect to all possible positions, and study its effect on immigrants’ career development. We expect that immigrants mobilize their exposure to organizational structures to improve their subsequent career trajectories in new firms. Initial models with individual-level fixed effects reproduce familiar insights and offer tentative support for our main expectations.

Dispersal policies that randomly place refugees across different regions within a country have been shown to lead to inequality among refugees in life outcomes. Refugees placed in regions with lower employment rates – through no fault of their own – are more likely to experience unemployment. Because most research has studied this inequality at a single moment in time, our understanding of how the inequality develops over time has been limited so far. Competing theories exist on how the inequality could develop over time. Cumulative advantage theories suggest inequality will increase over time; those with initially favorable positions will be able to use this head start to advance even further while those with initially unfavorable positions remain left behind. Meritocracy theories suggest inequality will reduce over time; those with skills and talent will eventually obtain employment regardless of any random initial (dis)advantage. We use longitudinal survey and register data on a large and representative group of refugees in the Netherlands to examine this issue. The random placement of refugees across the Netherlands forms a quasi-experiment to establish causal effects. This combined with the rich longitudinal data puts us in a unique position to examine the long-term causal effects of refugees' placement region on their employment. The results are not only important for theory testing but also for evaluating random dispersal policies. Long-term inequality calls for measures helping those placed in unfavorable regions to restore equal chances for all.

Migrants' successful integration into the host society is often measured by their labor market integration. And migrants’ labor market trajectories provide insights into factors affecting labor market integration. The existing scholarship on migrants' labor market trajectories consistently underscores an employment gap, particularly for non-Western migrant groups as Western migrants perform the same or better than natives. The health status can explain the employment gap between Western and non-Western groups but the role of migrants’ health in establishing them in the labor market is not much studied. By using hospitalisation as a proxy for health status we explore the migrants' labor market trajectories. We used full-population register data of migrants who entered Finland between 2006-2010 from Statistics Finland and the Finnish Institute of Health & Welfare and followed them from 2011-2019. The migrants between 25 to 58 years of age and present throughout the follow-up were part of the dataset. We used Growth curve models to explore the employment and earnings trajectories over time. We found that hospitalisation did not explain the employment gap between Western migrants and other migrant groups except for migrants from Middle Eastern countries, China, and Africa. Among Middle Eastern, Chinese, and African migrants hospitalization reduces the employment rate and earnings compared with the Western migrants. Even after adjusting the results for health status, sociodemographic and work-related factors the employment gap was not explained. Further research is required to understand the employment gap between Western and non-Western migrants.  

While the emergence of welfare states, and the origins of social protection in healthcare, have been examined extensively for Global North countries, there is much less research with a global perspective. Addressing this gap, this study provides a descriptive and analytical account of the characteristics of healthcare systems as they were introduced worldwide. Using original and unpublished data, the study classifies healthcare systems according to the main actor type in regulation, financing, and service provision. We find two worlds of healthcare regulation – a state-regulated and a societally-regulated. Adding the financing dimension yields six clusters of healthcare regulation and financing. Based on regulation, financing, and service provision the classification reveals the existence of 12 healthcare system types. While systems that rely on societal actors mainly emerged prior to the mid-20th century, state-based systems have characterized system introductions since then. The classification of healthcare systems in 165 countries shows that only a limited number of actor combinations can be found empirically. However, it still presents greater variety than previous studies focusing on the Global North. The notable historical and regional patterns in the choice of healthcare system types can serve as a starting point for further research on healthcare system development.

This study generates a classification of 26 European OECD countries with respect to care regimes, based on indicators measured around 2009 and 2017. Building upon the literature, two important dimensions of care arrangements are empirically tested: de-familialization and familialism. Latent profile analyses show how these two dimensions indicate different types of care regimes. Using self-collected aggregated country data for 2009 and 2017, we constructed fourteen indicators, aimed at care for children and the elderly. We include five formal indicators of care institutions for children and two informal ones, five formal ones for elderly care, as well as two informal elderly care institutions. The results show six care regime types: (1) defamilialized-universal caregiver, (2) defamilialized-women caregiver, (3) supported familialism, (4) family care-young/supported familialism-old, (5) supported familialism-young/family care-old, and (6) familialism-by-default. Given the absence of a comprehensive theoretical framework for institutional care (as well as limited data across numerous country contexts), a typology helps us to gain insight into general contextual care institutions effects and as such develop a theoretical framework of (the impact of) care institutions. In addition, insight is gained into general contextual care institution effects on citizens lives in Europe.

The rapid ageing of the European population in recent years has also meant a significant increase in elderly care needs. While families still constitute the main elderly care provider in most European countries, their capacity to care seems to have decreased in the face of these intensified pressures, calling for a strengthening of the state’s role. In this context, the discussion on whether families or states should be responsible for elderly care takes a new relevance, and the preferences of family caregivers appear fundamental to ascertain whether families will continue to carry most of the weight or, on the contrary, states will need to step up. The present study intends to address this issue by testing the existence of a causal link between providing elderly care to a family member and preferences for family or state responsibility, under the hypothesis that this causal effect is mediated by the negative impact of care work on the caregiver's well-being. This hypothesis is tested with data from the Generations and Gender Survey for a 3-wave panel sample of 5435 respondents in France (out of which 369 are family caregivers), which constitutes a prototypical case of explicit familialism in elderly care.  Data are analysed through a causal mediation approach using propensity score weights. Preliminary results suggest that providing elderly care leads to a decrease in well-being and increases support for state responsibility, but only for women. These results highlight the need for more encompassing public elderly care systems in conservative welfare states.

In aging societies that face a combination of welfare state retrenchment and a decline in family size, being able to rely on one’s neighbors for health-related care (also informal care) is becoming more and more important. Reciprocity plays a role in informal caregiving, yet reciprocating support to neighbors may be difficult for those struggling with health impairments. Previous caregiving experiences could potentially negate the impact of reciprocity on informal care provision, as people can rely on their lived experience instead of general knowledge to form expectations for the future. This may be particularly the case for negative experiences (e.g., caregiver burden). Empirically, we combine data from two surveys among the LISS panel. The first concerns retrospective caregiving data with information throughout the complete life course from which we can deduct who had caregiving experiences and if these were burdensome. The second concerns a factorial survey data. These included hypothetical situations in which a neighbor asks the respondent for help due to health issues (i.e., informal care).Vignettes differed among others on the likelihood that the neighbor would reciprocate help. Respondents were asked to rate their intentions to provide care. Our analytical sample consists of 1343 vignettes clustered in 882 respondents. Preliminary results indicate that people had stronger caregiving intentions when the neighbor was likely to reciprocate support. However, this was only the case for those who had (positive or negative) previous caregiving experiences. Contrasting our expectations, this suggests that previous caregiving experience does not negate but exacerbate the role of reciprocity.

This paper examines (I) which work and family life course variables covering elements of the order, duration, and timing of life course states are most relevant for wealth in older age, and (II) how these variables are associated with the gender wealth gap. Using German data and an approach that combines machine learning algorithms and sequence analysis tools with decomposition techniques, we extend previous research that either (I) assessed few, but potentially irrelevant summary wealth predictors, or (II) examined the relevance of entire life course clusters using sequence analyses without determining which single features matter.
As a first step, we apply the Life Course Feature Selection to assess which work and family life course aspects are the most important pension predictors among a multitude of variables. We identify 20 relevant variables with duration-related variables deemed as most important among the selected life course variables. The duration of education is clearly the most important wealth predictor, followed by the duration of unemployment as well as the number of unemployment periods, the duration of being a childless single, and the duration of homemaking. Particularly the latter two predictors have usually not been used previously to analyse wealth inequalities.
As the next steps, we will decompose the Gender Wealth Gap based on the selected life course variables.  Using a nonparametric decomposition technique, allows us to additionally quantify parts of the gap due to gender-exclusive combinations of life course experiences. Results will provide important impulses for inequality research and policy-related discussions.

Mounting research documents that wealth strongly persists across generations. Inheritances and inter-vivo gifts from parents to children are key contributors to this persistence. Intergenerational transfers are yet not only made unequally between families. It has been shown that a substantial share of intergenerational transfers is also made unequally within families. In this study, we address this puzzle of unequal division and empirically investigate the distribution of intergenerational transfers through the lens of what we call the ‘principle of dynastic succession’. This principle states that intergenerational transfers are made such that the family and its wealth are carried on into the long-lasting future, leading to unequal division. Analyzing administrative data from the German inheritance and gift tax register (2007-2020), we argue that the principle is particularly salient in the presence of structuring assets (e.g. family business) and that its application varies along the estate distribution. Going beyond individual parent-child transactional relationships, the principle of dynastic succession allows to link intra-familial disparities to long-term persistence in overall wealth inequality more broadly. Thereby, it sheds light on a so far neglected mechanism through which the family generates inequalities both within and between generations.

In light of this wide-ranging interest in status differentials in fertility, and interest in how monetary resources affect childbearing, a puzzling gap in the research field is an absence of studies that examine the relationship between wealth and fertility in contemporary Western societies. In the current study, I address this topic with data on how wealth (both own and parental) is associated with fertility choices both in mid-adulthood, and how it correlates with wealth stocks later in life. I examine change across cohorts and assess the relationship for both men and women. Evidence on how wealth stocks are related to fertility is almost exclusively available from low-income, non-western, and historical data sources.
Evidence on the relationship between wealth and fertility is interesting from several theoretical perspectives. Wealth is more exogenous from labor supply than both education and wages, and the interrelationship (and gendered aspects of this relationship) between income and fertility are central both in economic theorizing. Wealth and wealth accumulation are strongly associated with home-ownership which is a major part of household consumption, and home-ownership is known to be associated with fertility. Wealth may both make homeownership possible, and home-ownership may be an important route to wealth accumulation.

In Western countries men are on average a few years older than their female partners. The economic consequences of within-couple age differences are an understudied topic, limited to the consequences of income differentials. This study aims to investigate the association of within-couple age differences on personal wealth accumulation over the course of marriage in heterosexual couples in Germany. We take a gendered perspective and employ a dyadic multilevel approach to assess the consequences of the interplay of the female and the male partner’s age differences. The theoretical framework posits that age homogamy (M=W) benefits both partners’ personal wealth accumulation through synchronized joint investments over time. In return, age heterogamy (M≠W) may result in advantages for the older partner related to age productivity and bargaining power, albeit with stronger benefits for men. Utilizing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017), we employ multilevel dyadic growth curve models. We consider both women’s and men’s personal wealth and further distinguish between their jointly and solely held wealth. The study’s unique contribution lies in its dyadic life course perspective, shedding light on within-couple age differences as a largely neglected driver of the gender wealth gap.

There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the adverse impact of the COVID-19 on individual well-being. Using longitudinal data from the Czech Republic from 2015 to 2023, this paper focuses on heterogeneity of the responses to the pandemic. In particular, we raise two questions. First, we ask whether the levels of well-being developed differently for different population subgroups. In particular, previous studies showed that the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic varied across genders, age groups, and employment status. Second, we focus on population heterogeneity. Even though some of the differences might be found between specific subgroups of population, much of the heterogeneity lies within these groups. Thus, we shift our attention from the population or group means to the question of whose wellbeing declined, stayed on the same level, or improved during the pandemic. The preliminary results show that the Czech population experienced a gradual increase in life satisfaction before the outbreak of the Covid-19. However, the pandemic was accompanied by a large drop in life satisfaction. In 2023, we observe full recovery and the return to the pre-pandemic levels. However, the patterns were quite distinct for different age groups. The youngest individuals experienced the lowest level levels of well-being in 2020 but the mean satisfaction for this group started to recuperate already in 2021. 

Unemployment, especially when involuntary, often has a negative effect on one’s emotional well-being. Having a social support network and performing a meaningful social activity through volunteering, however, could make volunteers less sensitive to the stress of job loss. This study investigates to what extent volunteering buffers the detrimental effects of unemployment. We estimate how associations between unemployment and life satisfaction are different for volunteers and non-volunteers, and how these effects differ across age groups. Harmonized microdata are used from seven panel surveys, covering over 1,000,000 observations from more than 300,000 respondents in 22 European countries. We provide open code and documentation. Results from first-difference regression models show that drops in life satisfaction after unemployment are larger for people until 55 years old than for those 55-65 years old. Volunteering does not moderate the association between unemployment and life satisfaction in any of the age groups, contrary to expectations from Latent Deprivation Theory and Role Theory. By adding robust evidence from Europe about the relationships between unemployment, volunteering, and life satisfaction, this study contributes to the understanding of inequalities in emotional well-being across social groups in different contexts. While volunteering may contribute to healthy ageing of volunteers in other ways, it does not seem to serve as a buffer against the scars of unemployment.

There is abundant research linking advanced maternal age with poorer perinatal health, including higher risks of low birthweight, pre-term birth, and stillbirth. Nevertheless, there remain uncertainties as to the strength of associations and the extent to which these apply to healthy women. Socioeconomic resources have proven protective against adverse birth outcomes, which raises the question of whether they also could mitigate the effects of age. This study seeks to provide an answer focusing on Spain, a lowest-low fertility country where childbearing postponement is particularly pronounced; especially among the most educated. Drawing on register data from the Spanish Birth Statistics (2007-2021; n=5,746,334 births), and using linear and logistic regression models, it explores how different perinatal outcomes relate to maternal age measured in categories, to whether the mother has higher education, and to the interactions between both. Maternal age shows statistically significant incremental effects on perinatal health risks. Maternal education mitigates the increased probability of preterm birth associated with age for women between 35 and 44 years old, but only in the case of non-extreme prematurity. Similar interactive effects could be at play regarding risks of decreased birthweight, low birthweight, and very low birthweight, yet they disappear when adjusting for parity. Maternal education does not cushion the negative impact of age on stillbirth risk. These findings, entailing modest mitigation of age effects at best, call into question the assumption that marked postponement of motherhood should not entail significant risks for the offspring if adequate healthcare monitoring and sufficient maternal resources are guaranteed.

The social environments of same-sex couples have been improving over time due to policy and norm changes, yet widespread health disparities are experienced by people who identify as sexual minorities (e.g., gay, lesbian, bisexual). How can researchers reconcile these disparate findings? Using a large national Swedish survey we investigate a possible explanation: Same-sex couples are a small, positively selected, well-supported subset of all people who identify as sexual minorities, a large group that also includes individuals who do not live with partners, are single, or have a sexual minority identity but are in different-sex relationships. Yet because of measurement challenges in identifying the larger group, the smaller group of same-sex couples is often used as a proxy for sexual minorities. Our work shows the expected health disparity patterns. To explain them, we examine health-predicted risks in several domains—stress, victimization, social isolation, discrimination, and risky health behaviors. Findings suggest that same-sex partnerships provide important protections counterbalancing many minority stressors. As among heterosexuals, partnerships among gay/lesbian respondents provide substantial protections from health-related risks. In contrast, bisexuals, most of whom appear to be partnered with someone of a different gender, do not usually experience the same degree of protection. Unpartnered bisexual and gay/lesbian respondents experience substantial health-related risks across a wide variety of domains. These findings suggest that future research should not rely on same-sex couples to represent the experiences of sexual minorities; rather, self-identified sexual orientation is a very important measure for documenting these experiences among a broader and more heterogeneous group.