Objectives Traditional approaches studying smoking focused primarily on individuals. Nowadays there is a shift from individual-level models towards models that incorporate contextual effects. This research project takes place in this trend. The purpose of this specific analysis is to investigate the influence of household on smoking practices, in order to determine if the household is a relevant unit to study smoking. Is there evidence for an household effect on smoking? In other words, do household factors (both observable and unobservable) affect individual probabilities of smoking, all other individual characteristics being equal? Is the household effect sensitive to the national context? Materials and methods Data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) were used. All individuals aged more than 16 years are interviewed within the selected households. The probability to be a daily smoker is explained by variables at the individual level and at the household level. We take into account a possible specific effect of the household by implementing a random effects probit model. Results This study brings to light a phenomenon of clustering of smoking habits within households, which is modulated by the composition of the household. Preliminary results seem to show that the longer the sitory of tobacco consumption in the country, the more sensitive the concordance.
Conclusions This research gives evidence for clustering of smoking practices in household, the effect being different according to the context of the household and the country. Research about health concordance overwhelmingly suggests evidence for clustering of health status and health behavior. This offers room for a deeper understanding for the causes of health concordance. Next step would be to determine the reason for concordance (is it due to ex-ante correlation or ex-post convergence?).

The increase in European divorce rates over the past decades was accompanied by several changes in divorce laws. Yet for European countries, research on the effects of divorce law on the divorce rate is scarce. Most of the existing studies are based on data from North America and provide numerous, but inconsistent, results. We use fixed‐effects regression models to examine the impact of the introduction of unilateral divorce on the divorce rate in Western European countries. We find that de facto unilateral divorce practices led to a sustainable increase in the divorce rate, whereas legal rights to unilaterally divorce had no long‐run effects.

This paper analyses the extent to which individual and workplace characteristics and regional policies influence the use and duration of parental leave in Spain. The research is based on a sample of 125,165 people, and 6,959 parental leaves stemming from the ‘Sample of Working Life Histories’ (SWLH), 2006. The SWLH consists of administrative register data which include information from three different sources: Social Security, Municipality and Income Tax Registers. We adopt a simultaneous equations approach to analyse the use (logistic regression) and duration (event history analysis) of parental leave, which allows us to control for endogeneity and censored observations. We argue that the Spanish parental leave scheme increases gender and social inequalities insofar as reinforces gender role specialization, and only encourages the reconciling of work and family life among workers with a good position in the labour market (educated employees with high and stable working status).

Abstract

Recent research on social inequality and the family has pointed out that partners provide an important social context for individuals’ decisions, behaviour and resulting social outcomes. Unemployment is a particularly interesting issue to be studied in the context of partnership, as unemployment and the ensuing loss of income of one partner might affect the whole family, and fast re-employment reduces the risks of economic uncertainty and deprivation of the family. However, the particular effects of the partner and his or her resources on unemployment of the other and its duration have not yet been fully explored.
In our paper we examine how couples deal with each other’s unemployment, i.e. whether and how quickly re-integration into the labour market occurs. We look at the effects of different kinds of partner’s resources, in particular financial assets and social capital. Applying job search theory, one would expect that the more financial support the partner can provide, the longer an unemployment episode would last, whereas the higher the partner’s social capital, the more likely a job offer is to occur. Economic theories assume negative effects of both the partner’s financial resources and social capital on the other’s re-employment chances, either due to specialisation gains in the joint household or due to individual maximising of bargaining power that keeps the better-off partner from sharing resources. Whereas these theories are gender-neutral, gender role theories predict differential effects of the partner’s resources for women and men. If a male partner provides a high income during his wife’s unemployment this could prevent her from taking up work again. In the opposite case, this relationship of available resources and unemployment duration could be weak or non-existent. This ‘gender asymmetry’ should be modified by two characteristics: first, the birth cohorts the partners belong to, and second, whether or not they have children.
Empirically, we test these hypotheses using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), a longitudinal household survey. Based on this data source we analyse the effects of the partner’s resources on unemployment duration by applying event-history models. We find a partnership premium for men, whereas married women are least likely to leave unemployment. Regarding the role of different resources of the partner, men gain from their spouse’s labour market resources. Surprisingly, for women the partner’s income accelerates re-employment. However, this finding is mediated by the fact that in a traditional male breadwinner model the female minor earner refrains from re-entering paid work. Furthermore, we cannot detect historical changes, but strong differences for women with and without children.

Educational attainment and social background have crucial impact on individual labour market outcome
and explain part of the differences in hourly earnings of Dutch males and females in their thirties (cf.
Traag et al. 2006). However, actual earnings will not only depend on one’s earnings capacities but also on
the family situation that has an impact on both the labour supply decision and the type of job one chooses.
In this paper, we analyse the relationship between educational attainment, social background, and spouse’s
resources on the chance to have a paid job and on earnings. The labour division within the household is
partly due to cultural factors and individual preferences but will also depend on the earnings capacity of
both partners. It is expected that the relative importance of the partner’s earnings capacities and cultural
factors varies with educational background.
For our analysis we use data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The basis builds the Secondary Education
Pupil Cohort (SLVO) that started in 1982 with 16.813 pupils who were in their last year of primary
education. These pupils were followed until the moment they left full time education. Tests of school
performance and non-verbal intelligence were administered in the first year of their secondary education,
as well as socio-economic background information about the nature and quality of their families of origin.
The dataset has been enriched by register data of the labour market position, income situation, family
composition and neighbourhood information from 1999 to 2005. As proxies for the individual and
partner’s earnings capacity we consider the actual hourly earnings, hourly earnings before cohabitation
and the income and wealth positions of siblings, parents and parents in law.
We find that for women the chance to have a paid job strongly depends on the earnings capacity of their
partner. The higher the earnings capacity of the partner the lower is the chance to have a paid job. The
number of hours does not depend on the husband’s earnings capacity, but on the number and age of
children in the household. For men the opposite is true; the chance to have a paid job does not depend on
his wife’s earnings capacity. Both for men and women earnings, the chance to have a paid job and the
number of hours worked increase with the level of education. The impact of the partner’s earnings
capacity does not seem to vary with educational background, however. For both men and women actual
hourly earnings are positively correlated with the wealth of the father in law, suggesting that there is
positive assortative mating with respect to unobserved earnings traits.

Can welfare states decrease gender inequalities? From earlier answers largely in the
affirmative, in recent years sociologists and labor economists have underlined what they see
as serious unintended negative consequences of gender egalitarian policies, consequences
including increasing occupational segregation, intensified employer statistical discrimination,
and decline of women’s career ambitions. Pointing to major methodological problems for
these interpretations, we re-examine potential effects by unpacking welfare state policies into
a multi-dimensional typology of gender-relevant institutional policy structures in 18 countries.
The broad spectrum of dependent variables includes occupational and work segregation,
motherhood penalties, as well as gender gaps in access to paid work, top earnings, managerial
positions, corporate boards, and influential roles in democratic politics. Our gender policy
typology identifies major differences in outcomes among countries, but fears of perverse
effects of egalitarian policies can not be verified.

Can welfare states decrease gender inequalities? From earlier answers largely in the
affirmative, in recent years sociologists and labor economists have underlined what they see
as serious unintended negative consequences of gender egalitarian policies, consequences
including increasing occupational segregation, intensified employer statistical discrimination,
and decline of women’s career ambitions. Pointing to major methodological problems for
these interpretations, we re-examine potential effects by unpacking welfare state policies into
a multi-dimensional typology of gender-relevant institutional policy structures in 18 countries.
The broad spectrum of dependent variables includes occupational and work segregation,
motherhood penalties, as well as gender gaps in access to paid work, top earnings, managerial
positions, corporate boards, and influential roles in democratic politics. Our gender policy
typology identifies major differences in outcomes among countries, but fears of perverse
effects of egalitarian policies can not be verified.

In this paper we explore how data on the use of time might be used to investigate the multi-level connections between family-related policies and fathers’ child care time in a cross-national context. We present a case study analysis of ‘fathering strategies’ in which empirical findings from time use data are compared with detailed policy information from Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These analyses show that time use data can indeed shed light on the nuances of the effects of specific policies in different national contexts. However, they also point to the need to consider the complexity of multiple policies and their adoption in specific national contexts across time. To date, cross-time analysis has been stalled by lack of suitable data combining detailed policy information with good comparable measures of the time spent in family work from successive time use surveys. We describe the development of a cross-national, cross-time database which combines time use data with relevant social and family policy information, with the aim of providing a multi-level research tool to those interested in exploring further the relationships between policy and family work

Trends in paid work time and unpaid work time derived from the Multinational Time Use Study indicate a slow and incomplete convergence of women’s and men’s work patterns over the last 40 years in OECD countries. The evidence seems to suggest that 2009 represents an approximate mid-point in a 70-80 year process of gender convergence in work patterns.
Nevertheless, analysing UK data from a life course perspective reveals some remaining barriers to gender equality. Although men and women have more or less the same amount of total work time, women increase their proportion of unpaid domestic work to all work steadily over the conventional life course. Men’s paid work time, by contrast, remains relatively stable and constitutes the major share of their work time. Furthermore, gender segregation in domestic work persists. Women are responsible for both routine types (e.g. cleaning and cooking) and non-routine types of domestic work (e.g. childcare, shopping and gardening). In contrast, men spend little time on routine housework. Their increases in domestic work time over the life course concentrate mainly on care and other non-routine types of domestic work.

The overall results may suggest a “lagged adaptation” in the division of labour between men and women. That is, the gender ideologies established in childhood are challenged by observation and experience of gender roles that are inconsistent with those inherited assumptions. This may lead in turn to partial adaptations in the ideologies transmitted to the next generation. Gender equality is most difficult to achieve in traditionally feminine types of domestic work.

This project studies how dual earner heterosexual couples negotiate and decide about the division of paid and unpaid work in the household, and how these processes and outcomes differ across welfare regimes. We combine currently available quantitative data on the division of paid and unpaid work, with a qualitative longitudinal approach, focusing on dual-earner couples who are having their first child. The change in the division of work around the time of first birth is crucial for gender inequality in the household. It also has long-term consequences for gender inequalities in the labour market (e.g. Mandel and Semyonov 2005; Ruhm 1998). Quantitative analyses of gendered employment transitions are used to identify national patterns of earning and caring around fist birth, and to compare them cross-nationally, with specific focus on the role of national institutions. With the quantitative data, we can also verify and generalize the findings from the qualitative study as well as extend the analysis in place – over welfare regimes – and time. The qualitative data will show how individuals subjectively frame conditions and decisions in various contexts and indicate the degree to which different theories such as the doing gender approach, the relative resource/bargaining perspective and specialization strategies (translated into various arguments used in the negotiation process in the household) may influence different decisions in different institutional settings.
This international research project includes Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. These countries symbolize different welfare state regimes where Germany and the Netherlands symbolise the conservative and Sweden the social-democratic welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990; 1999). After a more detailed description of the project, we will present some preliminary findings from the German qualitative part. In addition, we will present results from a quantitative event history study of career related consequences of women’s time out on family leave for Germany, Sweden, and the U.S. (Aisenbrey, Evertsson & Grunow, forthcoming).

We estimate a collective time allocation model, where two-earner households behave as if the spouses maximize a household utility function, and where one-earner households, where only the man works, behave as if the spouses maximize a household utility function, conditional on the zero job-hour choice
of the woman.

We find that the shape of the individual indifference curves are mainly influenced by leisure and the household income. For one-earner households, also household production is important and this is because there are relatively more children in these households. Differences between one-earner and two-earner
households seem to reflect the difference in specialization behavior of the spouses. Women in one-earner households have more bargaining power than their partner, and we find the opposite for two-earner households. The bargaining position in two-earner households is determined by the individual wages, while for one-earner households, it is determined by the wage rate of the man, the
number of children and age.

Finally, we evaluate how one extra hour of female labor supply influences the household and the individual utility levels, assuming that the labor supply of women may be non-optimal for both oneand two-earner households. An increase of the woman’s labor hours would be a Pareto improvement for
two-earner households. For one-earner households, we find that an extra hour of labor is beneficial for the household and for the woman, but not for the man.

This paper studies changes in the timing of marriage and first childbirth between post-
WWII Italian generations. In particular, it analyses how macro-level changes, such as
processes of regulation and de-regulation of the Italian labour market and their effects on
the individual work trajectories, affect the time of transition to parental roles.
Standing at the core of this paper is the idea that, given the characteristics of the subprotective
Italian welfare and the insider scenario boomed by the 80s-90s partial and
targeted labour market deregulation, to be a young and instable worker or, more generally,
a marginal or secondary labour market participant produces a delay in the transition to
adulthood particularly for what a delay in marriage and childbirth for the last cohorts of the
Italian population are concerned.
This question becomes even more central if we consider that non-standard or unstable
work experiences as traps from which is hard to escape while hampering the transition into
better employment conditions – which, in the context of an insurance-based welfare,
directly translate in social rights. The negative effects of these processes regard mainly
youngest cohorts, approximately individuals born from the second half of the Sixties on. In
particular, individuals poorly endowed with personal and familiar resources are those who
experiment this situation to a greater extent, enhancing in this way the role of the well
known factors affecting social inequality. These people, “disembedded” from the “fordist”
welfare guarantees, do not manage to catch the opportunities offered by the new “flexible”
labour market and post-fordist productive environment.
The analysis will be conducted on ILFI (Longitudinal Survey of Italian Families), a
prospective panel survey that includes retrospective information on education, work career
and family dynamics. As regards to methods, duration EHA models are employed.
Results show how the combination of the mentioned institutional factors produces
additional risks of social exclusion that are strongly cohorts-biased and that are adding to
the pre-existing structural factors of social stratification and inequality.

The paper argues that due to the increased labour market participation of women in part-time
jobs, work norms have changed. It has become less evident who should work how many
hours, and this is a main cause why Dutch citizens show less support for the norm that work is
a prime social obligation. We argue that the social mechanism for the norm change is to be
located in adjustment processes in the households. We elaborate hypotheses on the basis of
this argument, and test these hypotheses by applying multi-level regression analysis on the
OSA Labour Supply Panel surveys for the period 1988-2002. The results of these tests show
that in the traditional breadwinner-families both partners, the breadwinner and the housewife,
show strong support for the norm that work is a social obligation. Working women and men
with working partners show less support for the norm. Due to the increase of the share of
working women, support for the norm has decreased. The results show that every new cohort
shows less support for the norm. The general picture is that in the Netherlands, partly due to
the growth of part-time work, the traditional work ethic is declining. For younger generations,
with both partners participating in the labour market, work is increasingly becoming only an
instrumental value. Nevertheless, because the instrumental value of work is high, there is only
a slow and limited decline of labour supply.

The aim of this paper is to examine differences in batterers’ patterns of violence within the couple between an Australian and an Italian National sample of women who have suffered physical or sexual violence. I attempt to identify abusers types using 4 descriptive dimensions (i.e., severity of physical or sexual violence, severity of psychological violence, alcohol use, generality of violence). Latent class analyses is used to identify subgroups of violent men; the violence patterns and prevalence of subgroups are then compared across countries’ samples. Australian data is drawn from the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS, 2003). The sample consists of 6,677 women and 1,709 violent men were found; Italian data is drawn from the Indagine sulla Sicurezza delle Donne, Istat (ISD, 2006). The sample consists of 25,065 women and 2,536 abusers were investigated. The main result is the identification of three types of batterers (family only, FO; borderline, BD; and generally violent-antisocial, GVA) in each sample. This typology is consistent with previous results from batterers’ non-representative samples researches. FO men show a low severity level of violence; BD men reveal higher level of violence severity and point out a higher level of alcohol use; GVA men achieve a high level of violence combined with alcohol abuse, and criminal behaviour. Despite uniformity in typology found across countries, there are notable sample differences in class prevalence. FO batterers, for example, are widespread in the ISD, on the contrary BD are rampant in the IVAWS. On the one hand these findings highlight the utility of latent class techniques for understanding men’s use of violence within the couple. On the other these results show that a consistent abusers typology is likely to be identified also using the victims’ point of view

Women tend to concentrate in jobs that require lower investments in specific skills and this has negative consequences for their earnings. This paper proposes a supply-side model with macro-level effects to explain why this is the case. The job-allocation decision is modeled as a discrete choice between two ideal job-types, one that requires high investments in the job and one that does not. Individuals consider the tenure-reward profiles of each job-type and choose rationally on the basis of their expected job tenure. Women’s tenure expectations are influenced by individual-level characteristics, including their gender attitudes and preferences, but also by two types of social structures from which information is drawn: 1) macro-level distributions —in particular, the presence of professional women and housework-cooperative men in women’s region of residence—, and 2) past family experiences —in particular, the employment histories of women’s own mothers. This model is tested using data from 17 industrialized European societies comprising 165 different regions. Results are consistent with the model predictions.

This paper analyses the relationship between unexplained
racial/ethnic unemployment and wage differentials and the segregation of social networks,
as measured by inbreeding homophily.
Our analysis is based on both U.S. and Estonian surveys, supplemented
with Estonian telephone communication data. In the case of Estonia we consider the regional
variation in economic performance of the Russian minority, and in the U.S. case we consider the regional
variation in black-white differentials.
Our analysis finds a strong relationship between the size of the differential and network segregation: regions with more
segregated social networks exhibit larger unexplained wage and unemployment differential.

Most of the empirical studies on education and fertility focus on characteristics of the female spouse. The role of the partner is often neglected. Yet, most children are fathered and grow up in a relationship. Hence, we assume that both partners’ education has to be regarded when analysing family formation. In our paper, we use couples as the unit of analyses and look at each partner’s education and the couple’s educational constellation, i.e. if both partners have the same educational level or if one partner is higher educated than the other. In our empirical analysis on first births we us the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP).

A review of existing sociological literature on the relation between educational attainment and fertility decisions reveals that most empirical studies focus on characteristics of the female spouse. The role of the partner is neglected for the most part. Yet, most children are fathered and raised in an existing relationship. Hence, we assume that the influence of both partner’s education has to be regarded as an important determining factor for childbirth. From a theoretical perspective using bargaining models family formation can be seen as a collective decision mutually agreed upon by both spouses and therefore characteristics, resources and attitudes of both partners have to be considered. In our paper, we use this approach to examine fertility decisions, taking into account both partners as actors and couples as the unit of analyses. Hence, we look at each partner’s educational attainment and the couple’s educational constellation, i.e. if both partners have the same educational level or if one partner is higher educated than the other.

Furthermore, from a life course perspective we apply a dynamic perspective. Regarding education, we are interested in both, in educational attainment and as well as the time since having left the educational system. In particular we are interested in how these individual characteristics are mediated by the partner’s and how these develop with the partnership’s duration. We thereby combine aspects of the individual life course of women and men with couple’s life course characteristics.
Our empirical analysis is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) that allows us to model partnership formation and duration as well as childbirth simultaneously.

In comparative welfare research, the concept of familialistic welfare regime denotes the major role performed by the extended family in welfare provision and in redistribution across generations within Southern European countries.

Housing is not a widely studied topic in this area of study. However, comparative research has highlighted that the extended family also plays a major role in providing housing support and, specifically, in sustaining entry into owner occupation.

Is it possible to trace connections between these two roles of the family in the Mediterranean countries?

The overall argument developed in the paper is that the intergenerational transmission of home ownership in Southern Europe is of pivotal importance in the reproduction of a welfare system centered on the family as a major agent in the allocation of economic resources and in care provision. Proximity between different generations is the link between the transmission of housing tenure and reproduction of the familialistic welfare system. On the one hand, the intergenerational production of home ownership is itself embedded in a family-based welfare system. In principle, the family provides support for home ownership regardless of the child’s location. In practice, forms of family support, at least in-kind, for housing – a dwelling as a gift or a bequest, or allocated for free – tend to be connected to the proximity between the two generations. The nearer to their parents that the descendants decide to settle, the more the former may help the latter in accessing home ownership through various in-kind resources.

On the other hand, proximity is also a reliable foundation for further mutual support between the two generations, taking the form, for example, of parents looking after their grandchildren or – vice versa – the middle aged couple taking care of a frail parent. Obviously, mutual support does not necessarily entail proximity, but the nearer to each other that parents and children live, the more frequent their personal interaction can be, and the easier it is for them to provide each other with care.

From this point of view, the inter-vivos transfers associated with the intergenerational production of home ownership seem to be the basis for a private, and to a certain extent pre-industrial, generational contract between care and – anticipated – inheritance.

The paper discusses this argument. Evidence for the relevance of the intergenerational transmission of home ownership in Southern Europe is provided at a macro level. Furthermore, using Italy as an exemplary case of a familialistic welfare regime, the relationships among family housing support to new couples, proximity between generations, and care to the elderly are investigated at a micro level.

The paper uses data on 33 countries from the 2002 wave of the International Social Survey Programme to study cross-national variation in the housework time of women and men from income-rich and income-poor households. Income-poor households are generally defined as those belonging to the bottom and income-rich households as those belonging to the top decile of the country-specific distribution of household income. The analysis shows that women in income-poor households do more housework than women in income-rich households in most countries. These rich-poor differences are attenuated, but remain sizable when differences with respect to paid work time, gender ideology, the woman’s relative income, and other variables are controlled. The main part of the analysis shows that cross-national variation in rich-poor differences can partly be accounted for by economic development and economic inequality. Providing a cross-national reinterpretation of arguments from the historically-oriented time-use literature, this is attributed the association between economic development and the diffusion of labor-saving technologies and to the association between economic inequality and high-income households’ consumption of domestic services. The former interpretation is backed by regressions that replace economic development by estimates of washing machine penetration for a subset countries.

Studies have shown that women receive lower wage returns to attained occupational prestige than do men. Studies also show that family responsibilities affect men and women differently which may be one major cause of women’s wage penalty.
In this article I examine if the gender difference in wage return for attained occupational prestige can be explained by diverse family obligations for men and women and if gender differences in work characteristics, which are difficult to combine with family duties, account for some of the gender wage gap in returns for attained occupational prestige.
If women’s family obligations are one major cause of women’s drawback the negative interaction between women and occupational prestige with regard to wages would be larger for mothers and married/cohabiting women than for single women without children.
Results show a gender wage gap between married/cohabiting men and women with children which grows with occupational prestige. However, this interaction between gender and prestige is insignificant among single women and men and for couples without children. Further, when controlling for time consuming work the gender wage gap for couples with children according to occupational prestige narrows, especially in occupations with high prestige.