Population Europe Newsletter - June 2020

Campolo & colleagues used an innovative methodology to investigate the roles of endogeneity of fertility, as well as gender and family attitudes and the bargaining process between partners, in the division of unpaid care work within couples.

Boissonneault & colleagues reviewed literature that studied the causes of increases in retirement age over the past 30 years in OECD countries. They found that changes to the social security systems effectively contributed to increases in observed retirement ages.

In Iceland, 70 per cent of children were conceived outside of marriage in 2018, yet marriage rates remain on par with the OECD average. Jónsson investigates whether the order of life course events, including cohabitation, marriage and childbirth, has changed over the past decades.

In the Netherlands, loneliness is more prevalent among Turkish and Moroccan older adults than among older native adults. To investigate possible explanations for this difference, Tilburg & Fokkema used survey data to compare five dimensions of loneliness between native and migrant groups.

Tina Hannemann (University of Manchester), Hill Kulu (University of St Andrews), Amparo González-Ferrer (Spanish National Research Council, CSIC Madrid), Pailhé (Institut National d'Études Démographiques, INED), Rahnu & Puur (University of Tallinn) investigated marriage, divorce, and cohabitation habits among immigrants and their descendants in four very different European countries: the UK, Spain, France, and Estonia. Their analysis demonstrated significant heterogeneity in partnership behaviour across migrant groups both within the same country and across the four European countries.

Dunatchik and Özcan find that a non-transferable paternity leave policy in Quebec had a short-term positive impact on mothers’ labour outcomes, including workforce participation and full-time employment.

Xiana Bueno (Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics) and Marc Grau-Grau (Harvard Kennedy School) conducted a qualitative study of how parents in Spain think about taking unpaid parental leave. They found that while the parental leave policy may be egalitarian on its face, couples continue to utilize it in a gendered manner.

Cosmo Strozza, Virginia Zarulli, and Viviana Egidi of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (University of Southern Denmark) and University of Rome “La Sapienza” analysed the 90+ population in Denmark to study how demographics, socio-economic characteristics and one’s lifestyle affect changes in physical and cognitive health, whether there is a pattern to these changes and how physical or cognitive aspects affect transitions of the other dimensions.

Binder-Hammer and colleagues analysed gender differences in intergenerational transfers to children and older people across 15 European countries. They found significant gender differences across countries related to time allocated to paid and unpaid work as well as how much men and women benefit from the pension system. These gender differences varied between countries.

Muller, Hiekel & Liefbroer investigate whether the "motherhood (earnings) penalty" holds true in the 21st century. Their results show that family trajectories do indeed have long-lasting consequences for women's personal earnings and employment, with women who follow traditional family trajectories facing the highest penalties.

How do countries differ in decisions to live alone over the life course? Researchers at the Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics & Universidad Complutense looked at global patterns and trends of those living alone based on sex and age. They found cross-national differences by gender and country-specific trends, and concluded that living alone is related to levels of individualism.

Juho Härkönen, M.D. (Anne) Brons & Jaap Dronkers found that children of divorce are among the forerunners of cohabitation as a replacement for marriage, choosing cohabitation over marriage at a faster rate than children of intact families. As cohabitation becomes more common, children from intact families "catch up" to children of divorce in their cohabitation patterns. 

Marianne Tønnessen & Eleonora Mussino of the Stockholm University Demography Unit investigated fertility trends among immigrant women from low-fertility countries in their destination country of Norway, a moderate-fertility country.