PopDigests

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Sweden, Sara Kalucza (Umeå University and University of Queensland) and colleagues found that teen parents go on to have many different types of families and partnerships in adulthood. For male teen parents, their parents' economic resources were more strongly associated with family formation trajectories, while for women, the family structure in which they grew up seemed to play a stronger role.

Miriam Evensen (Norwegian Institute of Public Health) and Torkild Lyngstad (University of Oslo) used population-based data from Norway and found that adolescent males with externalising disorders - such as anxiety and depression - have a lower chance of becoming a parent by age 30 than other men.

Anushiya Vanajan (NIDI and University of Groningen) and colleagues used data from the Netherlands to compare the associations between three flexible work arrangements and severe health-related work limitations among older workers. Working time flexibility was associated with fewer health-related work limitations, while work place flexibility and phased retirement were not.

Poor childhood socioeconomic conditions are associated with higher risk of frailty in old age, find Bernadette van der Linden (NCCR LIVES) et al. By using longitudinal and cross-national data, their study is the first longitudinal and cross-national European study to indicate that pathways to (pre-)frailty already begin during childhood and continue over the life course.

Compared with the demographics for the Syrian-born population in Sweden in 2010, a larger share now have a higher education, are younger, and less geographically concentrated, according to demographers Siddartha Aradhya and Eleonora Mussino (SUDA).

How do the mortality rates of those who migrate differ from those who remain in the origin country? Matthew Wallace and Ben Wilson (SUDA) use data on 35 migrant groups living in England and Wales and find that the lower the development level of the origin country, the greater the size of the advantage of migrants in the destination country.