Socio-emotional skills, vital for navigating life's challenges, significantly influence educational success and well-being. Thus, socio-economic disparities in these skills may contribute to broader inequalities in achievement. Despite their importance, research in certain contexts, like France, remains limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnplanned births remain relatively common, even in regions with high contraceptive prevalence and accessible abortion services, such as contemporary France. Previous studies have shown that unplanned births can have numerous negative consequences for the well-being of mothers and children, including poorer maternal health behaviors, delayed and insufficient prenatal care, and depression during or immediately after pregnancy. However, these studies do not provide conclusive evidence on whether the observed outcomes are a consequence of unplanned births or of the conditions in which they likely occur.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe paper studies the association between partners' relative incomes and union dissolution among couples in France. With the increase in dual-earner couples and women's educational level, couples in which women earn more than their partners are structurally becoming more widespread. Because female breadwinning challenges long-lived social norms regarding traditional gender roles, scholars have theorized a higher risk of union dissolution among female-breadwinner couples compared to couples in other income arrangements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper provides new evidence on inequalities in resources for children age 3-4 by parental education using harmonized data from six advanced industrialized countries-United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Japan-that represent different social welfare regime types. We analyze inequalities in two types of resources for young children-family income, and center-based child care-applying two alternative measures of parental education-highest parental education, and maternal education. We hypothesize that inequalities in resources by parental education will be less pronounced in countries where social policies are designed to be more equalizing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEconomic uncertainty and family dynamics are strictly connected. The increasing uncertainty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic is thus likely to affect couple relationships and stability, with potential opposite effects. Using data from the nationally representative EPICOV survey, that followed individuals throughout the first year of pandemic in France, we examined separation rates and how these were associated with different measures of employment and income uncertainty, including both pre-pandemic conditions and changes occurred during and after the first lockdown in Spring 2020 in France.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThough child shared physical custody arrangements after divorce are much more frequent and parents who use it more diverse in many European countries, little is known about their economic consequences for parents. By relaxing family time constraints, does shared custody help divorced mothers return to or stay on work more easily? Since lone mothers are one of the least-employed groups, and they face high unemployment rates, the type of child custody arrangement adopted after divorce is of particular interest for their employability. This article analyses to what extent the type of child custody arrangement affects mothers' labour market patterns after divorce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeath of a parent during childhood has become rare in developed countries but remains an important life course event that may have consequences for family formation. This paper describes the link between parental death before age 18 and fertility outcomes in adulthood. Using the large national 2011 French Family Survey (INSEE-INED), we focus on the 1946-66 birth cohorts, for whom we observe entire fertility histories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProponents of early childhood education and care programs cite evidence that high-quality center-based childcare has positive impacts on child development, particularly for disadvantaged children. However, much of this evidence stems from randomized evaluations of small-scale intensive programs based in the United States and other Anglo/English-speaking countries. Evidence is more mixed with respect to widespread or universal center-based childcare provision.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe spread of COVID-19 and resulting local and national lockdowns have a host of potential consequences for demographic trends. While impacts on mortality and, to some extent, short-term migration flows are beginning to be documented, it is too early to measure actual consequences for family demography. To gain insight into potential future consequences of the lockdown for family demography, we use cross-national Google Trends search data to explore whether trends in searches for words related to fertility, relationship formation, and relationship dissolution changed following lockdowns compared to average, pre-lockdown levels in Europe and the United States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn most developed countries, the fertility levels of parents and children are positively correlated. This article analyzes the strength of the intergenerational transmission of family size over the last century, including a focus on this reproduction in large and small families. Using the large-scale French Family Survey (2011), we show a weak but significant correlation of approximately 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaternal repartnering may have benefits for mothers and children. Yet, mothers with coresident children face more difficulty repartnering than other adults. Despite that shared physical custody and father involvement have increased over time, few studies have examined whether nonresidential father involvement and financial support are associated with subsequent maternal repartnering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article provides an original comparison of the time cost of children for the parental couple and for each parent in two European countries-France and Italy-that differ in terms of structural and normative constraints. Using time-use surveys carried out in 2008-2009 in Italy and in 2009-2010 in France, it investigates how Italian and French couples' time use varies quantitatively according to the number and the age of their children. We estimate both the direct and indirect time cost of children and take into account the compression of the parents' free time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article analyses how two co-residing generations contribute to the housework workload in Italy and France during the early 2000s. It studies the intergenerational exchange of time between young adults and their parents by indirectly comparing the level of domestic comfort enjoyed by young people in the two closely neighbouring countries. A focus on the reasons for staying in the parental home provides an explanation for the tendency of young Italian adults to prolong their stay in the family nest.
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