Child care in America
America is facing a child care crisis: care services are costly and scarce and fail to meet the needs of families. The majority of U.S. voters, Joseph Chamie opines, feel … Read more
Families and households
Groups of people related by consanguinity or affinity (e.g. marriage). Persons who co-reside
Family planning and children’s development in urban Malawi (2016-2018)
In Malawi, in a trial carried out between 2016 and 2018, children grew taller and exhibited more rapid cognitive development when their mothers’ access to family planning and reproductive health … Read more
Rising childlessness in Korea: marriage postponement and rising education
Childlessness in Korea is rising due to delayed marriage, increasing singleness and a growing share of childless unions. Misun Lee and Kryštof Zeman show that while more years in education … Read more
Education and the timing of family formation: a quantile regression analysis
Early union formation and motherhood are frequently observed in low- and middle-income countries, where heterogeneity in the timing of family formation is also high. Using Demographic and Health Surveys for … Read more
Unilateral divorce legislation supported the rise in educational homogamy in the US
The introduction of unilateral divorce legislation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to spikes in divorce rates, coincided with rising educational assortative matching into marriage. Geghetsik … Read more
Disability-free grandparenthood in Italy: changes between 1998 and 2016
In Italy, grandparents are a fundamental source of care for children, and families are the main source of support for older individuals. Margherita Moretti, Elisa Cisotto and Alessandra De Rose … Read more
The rise of nontraditional rural families in Canada and the USA
What has happened to traditional two-married-parent families in rural America and Canada? Shelley Clark and Matthew Brooks explore changes in rural and urban families over the past three decades to … Read more
Drivers of fathers’ parental leave uptake in Belgium
Using longitudinal register data for Belgium, Jonas Wood, Leen Marynissen and Dries Van Gasse find that fathers who earn less than their female partners are more likely to use parental … Read more
The shifting landscape of family forms around the world
Living arrangements have changed over the past five decades, leading to a decline of the extended family, growth of the nuclear family and, more recently, the appearance of living alone … Read more
Global household trends: converging sizes, divergent structures
Household structures reflect and affect social, economic, and demographic dynamics. Albert Esteve and Maria Pohl use the new CORESIDENCE database to explore the transformation of households over the last five … Read more
Trends in child support agreements in the US, 1993-2018
What are the trends in the prevalence of child support agreements in the US? Apparently declining, based on frequently used stock data, but in fact stable or even on the … Read more
Shifting households and their effect on child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa
Households are important units of social, psychological and economic support for children, and variation in the presence of household members at different times can determine child survival. Ashira Menashe-Oren, Yacouba … Read more
Joint physical custody of children in Europe: A growing phenomenon
As union dissolution becomes more frequent around the world, the living arrangements of children of separated parents have become an important issue. Joint physical custody (JPC) is believed to be … Read more
How many relatives do the Swedish have?
Little is known about the composition of kinship groups and family members outside the household, and how this evolves by age and over time. Martin Kolk and colleagues, exploiting exhaustive … Read more
Educational disparities in partnership formation and dissolution in Finland (1990-2019)
As marriage declines and divorce increases, partnership trends and household composition become increasingly determined by trends in the formation and dissolution of non-marital cohabiting unions. Marika Jalovaara and Linus Andersson … Read more
Children and (unequal) sharing of housework between partners in Hungary
In addition to their childcare responsibilities, women with young children often have to do more housework, thus making an already unequal balance even more skewed. Zsuzsanna Veroszta shows that, in … Read more
Cohabitation matters when studying breakups of couples with different migrant backgrounds
Endogamy (partners of the same geographical origin) is said to lower the risk of marriage dissolution. However, once cohabitation is included in the analysis of Belgian (register) data, Layla Van … Read more
The educational hypogamy puzzle in India
Status exchange is a leading factor behind the rising share of educational hypogamy marriages in India (women marrying less educated men), says Koyel Sarkar. Lower caste women aspire to upward … Read more
The old and the new natalism are not at odds
Religion has historically been a pronatalist force, but because it fosters traditional gender role attitudes, it could impede a fertility recovery stimulated by gender equity. Instead, Laurie DeRose explains how … Read more
Looking after mum and dad: caregiving by adult only children in UK
Adult children with siblings can share caring for ageing parents but only children face this responsibility alone. Jenny Chanfreau and Alice Goisis find that adult only children are more likely … Read more
The mental health benefits of cohabitation and marriage in Norway
A Norwegian register analysis with control for time-constant individual characteristics shows an association between cohabitation and declining use of primary health care for mental diseases. However, the decline largely occurs … Read more
How close to your mother? Lifetime dynamics and racial differences
Spatial proximity among family members may profoundly affect people’s lives. What are the salient features of family dynamics over geographic distance? HwaJung Choi, Robert Schoeni, Hongwei Xu, Adriana Reyes, and … Read more
Generational overlap places a heavy burden on parents in the global South
Generational overlap has mainly been studied for populations in the global North, but it affects care time demands on parents worldwide. Indeed, demographic ‘sandwiching’ is more prevalent in the global … Read more
Rent liberalization decreased age at marriage in Egypt
Young people’s ability to marry increasingly depends on obtaining housing and forming independent households. Ragui Assaad, Caroline Krafft, and Dominique J. Rolando show how Egypt’s 1996 rent liberalization law reversed … Read more
Spain: a pioneer in gender-equal parental leave
Gender equality in child care can be promoted through individual entitlements to a non-transferable and well-paid leave of equal duration for women and men. While this design is still rare … Read more
Homogamy among high-income partners drives up family income inequality
More married couples today consist of two high-income or two low-income partners (i.e., income homogamy), which leads to greater income inequality in married-couple families. Yifan Shen shows that, all else … Read more
Skip-generation household trends in low- and middle-income countries
Zachary Zimmer and Emily Treleaven find a growing global prevalence of households that have grandparents living with grandchildren with middle generation absent. Country-level factors, like labor force participation rates, explain … Read more
Children of same-sex parents: an educational success story
Challenging claims of disadvantage in same-sex parented families, Jan Kabátek and Francisco Perales find that same-sex-parented children actually outperform their peers in many areas of academic achievement. Over the last … Read more
Grandparents looking after grandchildren in England
Giorgio Di Gessa, Paola Zaninotto and Karen Glaser find that, in England, most grandmothers and grandfathers provide grandchild care throughout the year to allow parents to undertake paid work. However, … Read more
What becomes of marriage when non-marital childbearing is the norm?
Nowhere in Europe is the share of births out of marriage larger than in Iceland. Nevertheless, most Icelanders marry. In this article Ari Klængur Jónsson argues that even though the … Read more
More siblings, less wealth in today’s Germany
Philipp M. Lersch studies the relationship between people’s number of siblings and their economic wealth in Germany. He finds that additional siblings reduce wealth by about 38%. Parental wealth moderates … Read more
Is support between parents and adult children reciprocal?
Hans Hämäläinen and Bruno Arpino investigate short-term reciprocity of intergenerational support from the viewpoint of adult children. They consider multiple forms of support and examine whether previously received support from … Read more
How cash support and tax relief may matter for third births in Hungary
Well targeted policy measures can influence fertility even in times of intensive social and economic change. Analysing data from the Hungarian Generations and Gender Survey, Zsolt Spéder, Lívia Murinkó and … Read more
Gender-asymmetric time allocation and divorce. A US-West Germany comparison
Examining couples in both the United States and western Germany, Daniela Bellani and Gøsta Esping-Andersen find lower divorce risks when the division of unpaid work is more balanced. This suggests … Read more
Family planning and child health care: the Peruvian case, 1996-2000
In 1996-2000, for the first time in Peru, surgical contraception was promoted among indigenous women, and sometimes imposed upon them. As Marianna Battaglia and Nina Pallarés show, its overall positive … Read more
Transnational families living between Africa and Europe
International migration and family life are frequently difficult to reconcile. Valentina Mazzucato, Djamila Schans, Kim Caarls, and Cris Beauchemin focus on three cases (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and … Read more
Same-sex marriages in Sweden: 20 years of change
Martin Kolk and Gunnar Andersson study the evolution of same-sex marriages, childbearing and divorce in Sweden. They highlight increases in childbearing and marriage of female couples in particular, and a … Read more
Strong family ties moderate the negative effect of family size on children’s education, in Wisconsin (USA)
Recent studies have questioned whether family size negatively affects children’s educational outcomes. Based on information from the extended famil, Ea Blaabæk and Joseph Molitoris find that family size has a … Read more
Legalizing same-sex marriages improves subjective well-being (in England and Wales)
Legalizing same-sex marriage is as an important step toward reducing differences in well-being based on sexual orientation. For example, the subjective well-being of individuals in same-sex couples increased following legalizationin … Read more
Do birds of a feather really flock together?
Hill Kulu and Tina Hannemann investigated the spread of ethnic intermarriage and co-ethnic marriage across different ethnic minorities in the UK. They found specific socio-economic factors for different ethnic minorities … Read more
In Switzerland, fertility does not rhyme with happiness
Parenthood typically improves people’s life satisfaction, even if only in the short run. Surprisingly, instead, Malgorzata Mikucka finds that a second birth has a negative, albeit temporary, effect on Swiss … Read more
Children, happiness and religiosity: the evidence from Israel
Religious couples tend to have more children than secular ones, suggesting that children add more to the happiness of the former than they do to the latter. Jona Schellekens investigated … Read more
Caregiving: there’s more than meets the eye
Women are more likely to provide care to multiple family members or friends simultaneously at most ages throughout the life course except at the very oldest ages when gender differences … Read more
Local childcare availability and dual earner fertility in Belgium
In the context of population ageing, work-family reconciliation policies potentially play an important role in supporting both fertility and parental employment. However, the evaluation of such policies remains a challenge. … Read more
Socioeconomic disparities in Finnish children’s family life
Increasing attention is directed towards the ‘diverging destinies’ of children born in different family contexts. One might expect disparities to be small in Nordic welfare states, yet in Finland, as … Read more
In Sweden, women move to their partner’s home at union formation
Women tend to adapt to their male spouse when families move. Maria Brandén and Karen Haandrikman examine whether this is also true for the moves couples make when forming a … Read more
Stability of U.S. couples with children in a comparative perspective
Cohabitation, nonmarital childbearing, and partnership dissolution are now common in the U.S. Katherine Michelmore and Kelly Musick examine patterns of union instability among couples who have had a child together, … Read more
Marriage markets and assortative mating in first marriages and remarriages in the USA
Using data from the American Community Survey 2008-2014, Zhenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter show how assortative mating patterns are subject to local marriage market conditions.They also find that previously … Read more
Stability of cohabiting unions in Europe
The increasing popularity of cohabitation has opened a debate on the stability of cohabitations, and especially those in which there is a child. Zuzana Žilinčíková shows that cohabitations have a … Read more
The myth of the sandwich generation in Brazil
Due to rapid and profound demographic changes, population age structure in Brazil has changed sharply in the past few years. Contrary to widespread belief, however, Maria Carolina Tomás, Everton Emanuel … Read more
Facilitating family enlargement in Europe through dual parental employment
Using European panel data from 2003 to 2011 (EU-SILC), Angela Greulich, Mathilde Guergoat-Larivière and Olivier Thévenon show that dual-earner couples are more likely to have a second child than couples … Read more
Fewer consanguineous marriages of Muslims in Israel
Consanguinity has important implications for public health as it increases the risk of passing on autosomal recessive genetic disorders to the next generation. Thus, it is important that we learn … Read more
The rights of homosexual families in Europe: the LawsAndFamilies database
Starting in the late 1980s, new laws concerning same-sex unions were passed, first in Denmark (registered partnerships in 1989) and the Netherlands (marriage in 2001), and then in several other … Read more
Children born to a lone mother and their well-being in the UK
Numerous studies have looked at the relationship between family structure and child well-being. Overall, the evidence suggests that children who grow up in a household with two married biological parents, … Read more
Sharing routine housework and desire for more children in East Asia
Low fertility levels have become a typical characteristic of industrialised countries where two distinct patterns are observed. A number of countries, especially in southern Europe and East Asia, have persistently … Read more
Family planning in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya
In Kenya, rapid population growth has occurred amidst poor urban governance and limited employment opportunities, leading to widespread urban poverty that is concentrated in informal settlements or slums. In Nairobi, … Read more
The rise of divorce, separation, and cohabitation in the Philippines
“What God has put together let no man put asunder”. This biblical quote is frequently heard among Filipinos, particularly among the older generations, to discourage young people from leaving an … Read more
Non-cohabiting relationships: mainly a transitional situation
Formerly synonymous with marriage, cohabitation has become a lasting form of union in France and this country is now among those where the practice is most widespread (Prioux 2009).Moreover, the … Read more
Marriage then the baby carriage?
The mid-20th-century was a Golden Age of marriage in Europe and the United States. People married early, usually in their early-to-mid-20s, and often, with over 90% of people marrying at … Read more
How does parental separation affect children’s day-to-day life?
Parental separation increases children’s risk of poverty The proportion of children experiencing parental divorce or separation has increased across Western countries. As a result, in 2014 about 16% of children … Read more
Bilan de dix ans de mariage universel en Espagne (2005-2014)
En 2005, l’Espagne est devenue le troisième pays de l’Union Européenne à légaliser le mariage pour les personnes du même sexe, après les Pays Bas en 2001 et la Belgique … Read more
The emergence of the one-child family in India
The whole world knows and talks about the “one-child” phenomenon in China. Most of this discussion is tied to analyses of the one-child policy instituted by the Chinese government in … Read more
The drivers of children’s outcomes in Australia
Childhood has gained renewed attention from academics, researchers and policy makers, as evidence shows that this stage of life deeply affects future educational achievements and labour market success (Blanden, Gregg … Read more
In France, second unions now more resilient than first
If at first you don’t succeed … The first union used to be the one that would last “until death do us part”. The transformation in partnership behaviour emerging in … Read more
Better education has become a stabilizer of marriages in Taiwan
While divorce is usually lower in Asian than in Western societies, a drastic rise in crude divorce rates has been reported in many East Asian countries in the recent past … Read more
Which adult children live with their elderly parents in China?
Co-residence between elderly parents and independent, married adult children is a common phenomenon in East Asian societies. For example, according to the 2005 China Inter-Census Survey data, two thirds of … Read more
On marriage, happiness, and gender specialization of work
The married are happier and more satisfied with their lives than the unmarried (Verbakel, 2012; Gove et al., 1990). Yet, as divorce and cohabitation increase, we may be facing a … Read more
The changing American age curve of divorce
The incidence of divorce, like the incidence of many other demographic phenomena, varies greatly across the life course. Divorce is most prevalent during young adulthood and relatively infrequent among the … Read more
Welcome to N-IUSSP
Dear Members and Friends of IUSSP, Welcome to N-IUSSP! It is my pleasure to introduce you to the new official press service of the International Union for the Scientific Study … Read more
The changing meaning of cohabitation in Europe and North America. Signs of convergence?
The diffusion of cohabitation during the last decades is one of the most striking aspects of wider social changes that have taken place throughout the industrialized world. Over time, the meaning … Read more
The decline of family size ideals and the Great Recession in Europe
The number of children individuals would like to have, or would have liked to have had, also known as personal ideal family size, has been stable in the EU-15 as … Read more